


The Man Who Sold the World

by VTsuion



Series: Mystery, Magic, and Other Twists in Reality [8]
Category: Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Magical Realism, Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon Divergence - The Empty House, Character Development, Detective John Watson, Drama, Gen, Immortal John Watson, M/M, Modern Era, Mystery, Sherlock Holmes Does Not Return after Reichenbach
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-11
Updated: 2020-04-04
Packaged: 2021-02-22 10:57:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 41,049
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22215022
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/VTsuion/pseuds/VTsuion
Summary: It has been over a hundred  since the death of Sherlock Holmes at the Reichenbach falls. Still, his memory lives on in his dear friend, Dr. John Watson, who has since become a detective in his place, working under the name Dr. Jonathan Holmes. When Dr. Holmes is called on to investigate a series of crimes based on the cases he published so long ago, he is forced to confront his past.
Relationships: Sherlock Holmes & John Watson
Series: Mystery, Magic, and Other Twists in Reality [8]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2149767
Comments: 12
Kudos: 16





	1. A Study in Scarlet

A young woman sat at her desk in a small office, hammering away at the mountain of paperwork before her. The sound of a lone violin drifted down from the upstairs flat; it seemed Dr. Jonathan Holmes was at it again. He didn’t play, as far as she was aware. He just listened, from records, of all things, at all hours. In the three months Margaret Thompson had been the landlady of 221 Baker Street, she had awoken in the middle of the night to the sound of the violin at least as many times.

It wasn’t that Dr. Holmes was a bad tenant, per se, just that he could be a tad unusual. You wouldn’t know it from looking at him, but he had lived at 221B Baker Street longer than anyone could remember. He was a kind man and his payments were princely for the small, outdated flat. But he was very particular in his habits, and ever so often he would mention something that he had no way of knowing.

And then there were the visitors. The strangest assortment of people arrived at the oddest of hours - almost as odd as the hours she heard the violin - in various states of distress. He always heard them, no matter when they arrived. Yet, he seemed to be a largely friendless man. Most people came by once or twice in the span of a week or two and then never again, and even the few who came with some frequency appeared to be on business of some sort - she always managed to find some excuse not to ask what.

The music wafting down from his flat really was beautiful in a haunting sort of way, though sometimes she wished he would play something a little more upbeat. But she couldn’t afford to just sit and listen when there was work to be done.

Margaret had barely returned to the form she was supposed to be filling out when a knock sounded at the front door. She put the form aside, not without a hint of relief, and forced herself from the comfortable chair.

“Coming!” she called out.

She swung the door open to find a young Indian woman - one of Dr. Holmes’s more frequent visitors - waiting a bit impatiently outside.

“He’s upstairs,” Margaret said.

“Thank you,” the woman replied and ascended the stairs.

Dr. John Watson sat in the living room of 221B Baker Street. The chair he occupied had long ago been the favorite of his dear friend, Mr. Sherlock Holmes. At times Holmes had sat in this very chair as he played his violin, a languid air overcoming his usually sharp features. Other times, he would pace the small room, letting the music flow out of his motion and his motion match the music. But all of that had been a very long time ago indeed.

Watson did not deny that he was attempting to recreate what once had been, as futile as the attempt inevitably was. He had done a fair job at it - the results were passable at the very least. The pieces he chose were a good fit for his mood - he was nearly always in the same mood when he turned to the records for consolation - but they paled in comparison to the original. It often crossed his mind how much of a shame it was that Holmes had died too soon for his improvisations to be immortalized on vinyl.

Watson let out a long sigh, letting the music wash over him until there was nothing else. Only now, long after his dear friend was dead, did he fancy he understood the joy Holmes found in listening to music. In the past his primary pleasure had been watching the way it affected Holmes, but now the music consumed him, carried him away from his lonesome existence. Still, for an instant he could have sworn that out of the corner of his eye, he glimpsed a tall, thin man bowing away at a delicate instrument.

A knock on the door broke him from his reverie.

“Come in.” He raised his voice over the speakers, but his eyes remained shut.

“Dr. Holmes,” the familiar voice of Detective-Inspector Talia Houghton, of the Scotland Yard, greeted him.

“Mrs. Houghton,” Watson - known for many years now as Dr. Holmes - replied, “What brings you here on this fine day?” He sat up straight and examined her.

The past few days had brought rain in abundance, so her shoes painted a clear map of the city, with splotches of mud from here and there, the most recent layer placing her outside the Scotland Yard in a hurry, and below that some indication that she had recently spent some time not far from Baker Street.

He met her steady gaze and urged her to tell her tale.

“I’ve got a case you might find interesting. It’s an unusual one, I’ll tell you that.” She shook her head in exasperation.

“Go on.” He leaned forward and pressed the tips of his fingers together in a gesture he had picked up over years of imitation. “And do have a seat.”

She took the other chair by the fireplace and fished a stack of laminated photographs out of her bag as she continued, “It’s a double murder. We’d say it was revenge, cut and dry, but the crime scenes look like they’ve been set up. It began a few days ago, on the 4th. Charles and I were called in to investigate a murder at 3 Lauriston Gardens, off of Brixton Road. It was a run down little house” - she handed him a picture that fit the description perhaps too well - “that seemed to have been abandoned. Charles is looking into the owner now. This is the scene of the crime.”

She handed him another photograph of a large square room, empty hold for the body of a middle-aged man, lying contorted in the middle of the floor, his body tensed at odd angles as though he was in severe pain. The floor around him was splattered with blood, but no wounds were visible on his person - a nasty poison then. He seemed to be in his mid-forties, of average height, with broad shoulders, curly black hair, and a stubbly beard. His suit was an awkward fit, nice as it was, and many years out of style. He was dressed in a fashion that Dr. Holmes had not seen for a very long time; there was even a top hat on the ground beside him. Only some subtle signs of wear suggested the clothes’ age - they were antiques that had been hardly used and well maintained, probably recently purchased from a collector.

Dr. Holmes looked back up at Mrs. Houghton and she explained, “He was poisoned, I’ve got the report here, if you want to flip through it.” She put a small packet on the table between them. “He died quickly and painfully. The blood on the floor all belongs to the perpetrator, they checked it for DNA, but it didn't match anyone on record. This is his too.”

She handed him another photograph and Dr. Holmes nearly dropped it in surprise. On a yellow square of bare plaster, devoid of the vulgar, blotched and fraying wallpaper that covered most of the room, was the word “RACHE” in large, dripping red letters, written in what could only have been blood.

“There weren’t any lights in the room,” Mrs. Houghton said, leaning forward to look at the photo in his hands. “We would’ve missed it if Charles hadn’t been looking over there with the torch.”

“You know what this is?” Dr. Holmes asked with some urgency. It wasn’t identical, no, but it was close enough and the writing on the wall sealed it.

“Our first theory was that the perp was trying to write ‘Rachel’ and was interrupted before he could finish,” she explained, “But the handwriting people squashed that; he wasn’t in a rush and didn’t stop short. ‘Rache’ is German for ‘revenge,’ so the current theory is that we’re looking for an angry German and there’s a ring in there” - she handed him a photo of a plain gold ring - “that corroborates that it was a crime of passion in revenge for something about a marriage, but that doesn’t explain it all being staged. Those clothes didn’t belong to the victim; it looks like the perp dressed him up once he was dead. And it gets even stranger - he wasn’t the only one. We found a couple letters in his pocket.”

She handed Dr. Holmes another photo of a pair of letters from the Liverpool and Great Western Steamship Company about an, as of 1881, upcoming journey from Liverpool to New York. One was addressed to Mr. Drebber and one to a Mr. Joseph Stangerson, both sent to the American Exchange on the Strand to be left until called for.

“Both the steamship company and the American Exchange have been out of operation for years. We were searching for Mr. Stangerson. We didn’t expect to find him dead.”

She handed Dr. Holmes a photo of what he deduced was a rather modern, fashionable hotel room. The floor was splattered with blood. Its lone inhabitant huddled below the window, wearing a nightdress that was once typical, but now would have looked matronly at best, torn and covered in dark red splotches. Written on the wall above him, in what Dr. Holmes suspected this time was the victim’s blood, was again the word “RACHE.” Mr. Jefferson Hope’s revenge was complete.

The next photo Mrs. Houghton handed him gave him a closer look at the victim. Mr. Stangerson had been stabbed on his left side, it was a deep wound that appeared to have penetrated his heart and ended his life. Upon the window sill above him was a small pillbox that Dr. Holmes did not doubt contained a pair of pills - one of the most deadly poison, and one entirely benign.

“That was taken yesterday afternoon in one of the guestrooms of the Ibis Hotel near Euston Station. The victim, actually a man by the name of John Rowe, was murdered at about two that morning. According to the coroner, it wasn’t the stab wound that did him in. He was poisoned and probably put into that nightgown after he was already dead - like Drebber - and then the culprit stabbed him for good measure. I don’t know why he stabbed a dead man, but there you go.

“We were able to identify John Rowe as the man who checked into the room, though nearly all of his belongings were found in a nearby dumpster. Everything of any value was gone. We still haven’t been able to find the real identity of Mr. Drebber. This is all of the identification they had on them.”

She handed him another pair of photos. Both depicted sets of cards, belonging to Enoch J. Drebber and Joseph Stangerson respectively, from Cleveland, Ohio in the United States of America, dated circa 1880. They were good replicas; the culprit had done his research.

“We don’t know why someone would want to make the crime scene look like it was committed in the 1800s. Nostalgia for Queen Victoria? The best theory we’ve got right now is that the culprit is trying to get revenge for something that happened to an Enoch Drebber and Joseph Stangerson then, maybe the victims were related to those involved or something. I looked up both of the names and all I could find in relation to a crime was a pair of fictional characters. We’d appreciate all the help we can get.”

The man once known as Dr. Watson let silence fall as he mulled the case over. At long last he spoke in a hushed voice, “Jefferson Hope died of an aneurysm the night before he was to be tried, he had no survivors that I am aware of.”

“So it was a real case? We couldn’t find anything in the Yard records, it must be down with the files in the basement. They still haven’t been computerized yet.”

He gave her a small smile, “I like to hope that some things will be left in reality, free from the world of electricity these past generations have built around themselves.”

“You sound like my grandfather,” she said with a laugh. It was times like these that his usually ambiguous age showed. “Computers make things a lot easier, a lot less time wasted on searching for things. I’d recommend you get one, though you seem to manage alright without somehow.”

“I happen to be very familiar with the case,” Dr. Holmes said, returning to the matter at hand. “The perpetrator seems to be emulating it rather closely. I expect he’s hiding out as a London cab driver as the original perpetrator did, unless it’s all a ruse to some other ends. Mr. Drebber and Stangerson were murdered by an American, also from Cleveland, Ohio, by the name of Jefferson Hope. I wonder if your man is so bold as to claim to be the same. All three men were originally from Utah, though I doubt that has much bearing now.”

Mrs. Houghton nodded, lost in thought, no doubt about the case. At last she found herself again, “Thank you, this should be enough to point us back in the right direction. I’ll call back once we’ve got the culprit.”

“Not a problem,” he said with a smile. “Thank you for bringing it to my attention. This case is particularly interesting to me, perhaps I will take it upon myself to do some investigating as well. I may require your assistance in a few days time.”

Mrs. Houghton agreed and soon departed.

Watson leaned back in his chair by the fire. It was a “three pipe problem” if ever he’d seen one - a faint smile crossed his face at the thought, but he’d been trying to quit tobacco for years.

He doubted this was a case of revenge, no the killer had nothing to do with Mr. Drebber or Mr. Stangerson. Even when the brilliant detective was long dead, everything came back to him. Watson let out a sigh. It could be anyone in the city, but if he knew his man, he would be easy enough to fish out. All Watson had to do was call up all the local papers and wait.

It was not long before the sound of a virtuoso scraping away at the violin enveloped the room once more. Margaret Thomson heard a distant echo of the music floating down the stairs as she continued her never ending paperwork.

* * *

Dr. Jonathan Holmes did not have long to wait for a reply to his advertisement. The first answer came that afternoon, requesting an appointment at approximately eight o’clock - not quite confirmation, but a very good sign as far as he was concerned.

Mrs. Houghton arrived at a quarter to eight and joined him in his vigil.

As the time neared, it felt distinctly surreal. With the strength of memory reinforced by oft repeated recollection, he could almost see Holmes sitting in his usual chair by the fire, scraping away at his violin as he had that day, so many years ago, while they lay in wait. As the music came to a carefully timed stop, he could almost hear Holmes’ words filling the void, his reminders of what to do in preparation - yes the door was open with the key in the lock - his irrelevant discussion of some book he had picked up the day before-

A sharp ring at the bell chimed in time with Watson’s recollections.

He was Holmes, standing and shifting his chair towards the door as a servant - actually the landlady - waved in their guest.

“Does Dr. Holmes live here?”

Uncertain, shuffling steps upon the stairs. A feeble tap at the door.

He could almost see Holmes’ uncertain expression, but this time he knew what was going on. “Come in.”

The door swung open and in stepped a feeble old woman, different enough to jar Dr. Holmes back to the present, but similar enough that he knew he was right. It was a good disguise, her boots even bore splashes of mud distinctive of the Houndsditch area. As he had seen Holmes do so many times, he waved her in and closed the door behind her, locking it shut. He was a foolish criminal indeed, if he had come himself, but culprit or confederate, this person would give him his answers.

The old woman pulled out an evening paper and pointed at their - no,  _ his _ \- advertisement. Her voice came out uncertain and stilted, as she mimed half-remembered lines, “It’s this that brought me, good gentleman, a gold wedding ring in the Brixton Road-”

“Your name and address, if you please,” Dr. Holmes interrupted.

She appeared taken aback, but replied all the same, “Lynne Sawyer, I live at Number 13 Duncan Street, in Houndsditch.”

“And the ring belongs to your girl, Sally Dennis, does it?”

“Sally Daniels, she lost it- on her way to the c-circus,” she told her tale hesitatingly - Dr. Holmes found himself a little disappointed in the criminal for doing such a poor job of it.

Still, the chase was on. Holmes had failed to capture the man who had come for the ring disguised as an old woman, but this time they would succeed. He motioned for Mrs. Houghton to step forward.

She took out the ring that they had found at the crime scene, still in a plastic evidence bag. “Do you recognize it?”

Mrs. Sawyer stepped forward and leaned over to examine the ring, before giving a frantic nod. “It belongs to my daughter,” she attempted to explain, holding out her hand for it.

Dr. Holmes stepped in before she could take it, and Mrs. Houghton put the evidence away. “We know everything about Jefferson Hope and the murders of Drebber and Stangerson. Your only hope is to make a clean breast of it.”

“Murders?” Mrs. Sawyer gasped, her eyes widened with fear. “What’s going on? There must be some mistake!”

“Your game is up. Tell us what you know and you may receive a lighter sentence for cooperating.”

“I don’t know anything about any murders, I swear! If this is a prank, it’s a bad one!”

“But you know Jefferson Hope.”

“He just lives in the flat below mine. A couple weeks ago he said he needed to borrow a ring for a few days. He was willing to pay so much for nothing and with money so tight, I didn’t ask any questions. All he wanted was for me to loan him the ring for a couple of days, and then to come pick it up when you put out that advertisement, he even told me what to say. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean anything by it, and I don’t know anything about any murder!”

He searched her features for the slightest tell, but as far as he could see she was speaking the truth. “Could you tell me a little more about Mr. Hope?” Dr. Holmes pressed.

“He’s a kind, strong man, a little younger than yourself,” Mrs. Sawyer said.

Dr. Holmes smiled at that - there was no doubt he was younger by a century at least. “Could you give him a year?”

She hesitated. “Forty, or forty-five, maybe.”

“What does he look like?”

“He’s a large man, not overweight I don’t think, but strong. He was a great help when I moved into the flat. He saw me in distress and offered to help with the lifting. I tried to pay him back, but he refused to take any of it.”

“Color?”

“Very tan, I think he does a lot of work outside.”

The description matched the man himself well. “You said he lives in the flat under yours. What’s your real address?”

“It’s 13 Duncan Street.”

“Do you know how long he’s lived there or where he resided previously?”

She shook her head. “I’m sorry, I haven’t known him for very long, I don’t know much about him.”

“Is there anything else you can tell us about him? Even the smallest detail may be of use to us.” Dr. Holmes tried to keep his voice gentle, but his impatience no doubt showed through.

She shook her head.

Finally, Dr. Holmes signaled for Mrs. Houghton to take over. She stood and stepped over to them. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Sawyer, but I’ll have to take you in for further questioning.”

“What’s going on? I swear I haven’t done anything!” Mrs. Sawyer protested.

“There’s no need to worry,” Dr. Holmes said as soothingly as he could. “She’ll just ask you a few more questions and make sure that you really are who you claim to be. So long as you answer honestly and thoroughly, you’ll be fine.”

Mrs. Sawyer gave an unsteady nod and Mrs. Houghton led her out the door.

Meanwhile, Dr. Holmes had a lead of his own to pursue. He hailed a cab and set off through the streets of London.

The drive was dizzying. The glare of bright lights cut through the darkness in blinding bursts that rushed by, swept up in the constant movement of cars and pedestrians alike. Horns blared, people shouted, the world had never been wilder. Dr. Holmes tried to keep his eyes focused against the visual din, squinting them to ease the burn of the flashing lights as he peered into the darkness.

At last the car screeched to a stop and he stepped out onto the sidewalk. It took a few moments for his eyes to adjust to the sudden stillness. Once he had regained his bearings, he made his way to the door of number 13 Duncan Street. A series of sharp knocks at the door brought him a man who identified himself as Keswick - after everything else, the name could not have been a coincidence. He seemed well-to-do, wearing a new sports jacket and slacks. His shoes and pants were clean despite the muddy weather, so he must have spent most of the day indoors. 

“My apologies for the hour,” Dr. Holmes said, “Does one Mr. Jefferson Hope live here?”

Mr. Keswick shook his head. “I can’t say I’ve ever heard the name,” he said, but his eyebrow twitched, suggesting otherwise.

“Not in the flat below Mrs. Lynne Sawyer?” Dr. Holmes prompted.

“I’m sorry, I can’t help you. Lynne lives here, she moved in fairly recently, but I don’t know any Jefferson Hope.”

Dr. Holmes knocked at every door on both sides of the street, but no one had heard of Jefferson Hope. A few knew of Mrs. Sawyer, but she hadn’t lived there long, so none knew her well. Some had seen someone matching Mr. Hope’s description helping Mrs. Sawyer move in, or otherwise spending time near her apartment, but they all assumed he was merely a friend of hers and took no further notice.

As much as Dr. Holmes asked about any of it - Hope, Sawyer, or even Keswick - no one else had as much as a helpful word to share. It was late in the evening by the time he returned to his own flat on Baker Street thoroughly done-up, if he said so himself.

As he lay in his bed, sleep slowly drawing him away from the world of mortals, he could have sworn he heard the sharp sound of the latchkey, followed shortly by Holmes’s hearty laugh echoing into the night after a fruitless chase.

* * *

The next morning Watson awoke to a dull ache in his shoulder and a sting in his leg from a battle in a war long since forgotten and left to the annals of history. His whole body resisted the very idea of movement. Still, somehow, his sense of decency managed to force him to his feet and the urgency of the case at hand kept him in motion through his morning routine until he was safely seated in his chair by the fireplace.

It was not long before a call from Detective-Inspector Houghton confirmed the one conclusion he had been able to draw from the night before; Mrs. Lynne Sawyer, was, by all appearances, who she claimed to be. Her address was no coincidence, both she and her daughter had been offered those particular apartments for well below market, putting more suspicion on Mr. Keswick. Unfortunately, Mrs. Sawyer had nothing new to say about Mr. Jefferson Hope.

If the culprit intended to follow through with his masquerade and turn himself in, now would be his chance, but Dr. Holmes doubted it would be that easy. If a cab driver under the name of Jefferson Hope existed at all, he was by all likelihood gone. Watson had been so caught up in being clever, so determined to be- no, to best Holmes at his own game that he forgot to think. As much as he wished it, he was not reliving his first case with the brilliant detective. Sherlock Holmes was dead and he could not live for the both of them, the best he could do was carry on the detective’s work. If only Mrs. Houghton had managed to find Mr. Hope before the advertisement had gone out, he may have been caught unawares, but it was too late now; he very well knew they were on to him.

The only other lead Dr. Holmes had was this man Keswick. Perhaps he was a little less careful, though it would not be easy to connect him to the crime. Still, a few calls to various acquaintances accumulated over the past hundred some years, and Dr. Holmes managed to trace the ownership of the Duncan Street flats in Houndsditch.

The current owner was in fact a man going by the name of Christopher Keswick who had purchased the flats in the past year for significantly above market from a Mr. and Mrs. Stone. Modern conveniences did have their advantages; a single call to Mr. Stone confirmed the information he had gathered - “a straightforward man... very eager to buy the flats… no, nothing particularly strange about him… didn’t say why he wanted it so bad” - and gave him a description of a man that matched the one he had seen the previous evening.

He was waiting for a call that he hoped would tell him a little more about Mr. Keswick when another call arrived from Detective-Inspector Houghton.

She began without preamble, “Jefferson Hope, an American from Utah by way of Cleveland and more recently Copenhagen,  _ was _ a cab driver for nearly a year. He officially retired as of today, though he gave notice a week ago. The company's records show that he picked up one Samuel Easton - the man we identified as our Mr. Drebber - from the Ibis Hotel on the evening of his death. His ‘permanent’ address was a place he rented for a month around the time he was hired and we traced the phone number he left to a cheap cell phone left in a nearby dumpster. We’re looking for other records under the same name, but it looks like he’s gone, or rather never existed at all. I hope you have better news.”

Dr. Holmes answered reluctantly, “The best I can offer is a potential co-conspirator; Mr. Christopher Keswick who owns the flat rented by Mrs. Sawyer. I haven’t found anything yet, but I suspect he’s not entirely above board. Do you have any information on Mr. Easton?”

She paused to write something down before saying, “He was here on business from Utah, stayed in the same hotel as Mr. Rowe and went missing at about the same time as we found ‘Mr. Drebber.’ It turns out both of them have been under investigation for various offences in Utah for some time, but neither has ever been convicted, and there’s no known tie to anyone here.

“We’ve also got the reports back on the clothes and other effects. It looks like they’re authentic, probably purchased over the internet. We’ve been going through sales, but haven’t found ‘Jefferson Hope’ there yet. I’m afraid our leads are drying up faster than we can find them. If you find anything, it’d be a great help.”

“There is one more thing.” Dr. Holmes hesitated, but he could not risk losing a potential lead. “You may want to keep an eye out for a Professor James Moriarty.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This story has been a long time in the making. I started writing it all the way back in 2012 and didn’t finish until 2018, though most of the actual writing was done on the later end, alongside wrapping up [A Scandal on Baker Street](https://archiveofourown.org/works/20097628/chapters/47605291). Now, it is finally ready to post (with some minor and major revisions)!


	2. The Sign of the Four

With one thing or another, two months passed. Christopher Keswick was, by all outward appearances, an ordinary man; a contract lawyer who rented properties on the side. He was brought in for questioning, but if he knew anything of the murders - which Dr. Holmes strongly suspected he did - he said nothing and was declared a dead end as Mrs. Sawyer had been.

Jefferson Hope did not resurface and Professor James Moriarty did not appear. Dr. Holmes resigned himself to moving on to other cases. After all, he was a busy man. It hurt his pride, but he was no Sherlock Holmes, and he did not have the brilliant detective’s unparalleled record - he was only human. This case was perhaps more personal than most, but life went on. Whatever had possessed a man calling himself Jefferson Hope to kill Enoch Drebber and Joseph Stangerson a second time, he appeared to be content to leave it at that.

It was a quiet day. Dr. Holmes had gone out on a walk through the city to clear his mind and returned with the solution to his latest case in hand. He hurried home to call Mr. Hess and tell him his problem had been solved. To his surprise, the landlady, Miss Thompson, greeted him at the door.

“I told you he’d be back soon,” she said to someone in the other room.

A small, blonde young woman stepped out of Miss Thompson’s office, into the suddenly crowded hall. She was well, if plainly dressed in a greyish beige dress, with a white scarf around her neck. Her clothes suggested low-level administrative work, but her hands were rough, as though she was accustomed to manual labor and possibly somewhat frequent injury. She gave him a smile, with a touch of mischief in her eyes.

“My apologies for keeping you waiting, Miss-”

“Marston, Mary Marston,” she answered.

Watson did a double take. For an instant he thought he glimpsed the all too familiar features of his dear Mary on this stranger’s face. Her wide eyes especially were an arresting bright blue that seemed to shine with a uniquely spiritual and sympathetic light. He could almost see her there, as she had been laid out on her deathbed, her face much too pale and so thin he could see her bones clearly beneath her skin.

But as his eyes tried to focus on the woman before him, the similarities seemed to vanish, and he was only met with an unfamiliar face, superficially similar at best. His grief turned to anger at whoever so callously tried to drag his dear departed Mary from her much too early grave. He had no doubt that this was the work of the same deranged hand that had reenacted the murders of Enoch Drebber and Joseph Stangerson by Jefferson Hope some months before, but now he had struck much deeper.

The woman who was  _ not _ Mary held out a hand for him to shake.

Watson- no, Dr. Holmes hesitated to accept it, but she was just as likely an innocent victim as a complicit pawn in the grander scheme. He forced his anger down and briefly took her hand. The confusion that had flashed across her face, no doubt in response to his expression, began to fade.

“Miss Marston,” Dr. Holmes said, more for his sake than hers, as he attempted to reorient himself, “What brings you here?”

She hesitated. “I’m not sure where to start…”

Dr. Holmes suddenly realized they were standing in the middle of the entrance hall, with a bemused Miss Thompson watching the interview.

“My apologies, please excuse me. Shall we?” He gestured up towards his rooms.

She nodded and led the way up the stairs. Dr. Holmes opened the door and let her inside. He took his usual seat by the fire and she assumed the other.

He took just a moment as she got comfortable to steady his nerves and steel himself for what was to come before forging into the case at hand; “I believe the beginning would be a good place to start,” he suggested, as gently as he could.

He knew how the story went: ten years ago, her father, a captain in the British Army, had vanished upon his return from serving abroad. Six years ago, she saw an advertisement asking for her address, which she answered and has, every year since, received a priceless pearl in the mail. And now she had received a letter inviting her to meet her benefactor. The details filled themselves in of their own accord as Watson struggled to distinguish his client’s all too familiar words from his own memories.

“This morning I received this letter, which you will perhaps read for yourself,” she concluded her tale and handed him a note on expensive antique paper.

He felt an eerie sense of deja-vu as he half-read, half-recalled the letter, “Be at the third pillar from the left outside the Lyceum Theatre to-night at seven o’clock. If you are distrustful bring two friends. You are a wronged woman and shall have justice. Do not bring police. If you do, all will be in vain. Your unknown friend.”

He read it several times over to be sure he had understood every word exactly as it was written before him, and even then he was not quite sure he had not imagined it entirely from memory.

“The envelope too, please” - he faintly recalled Holmes asking for it.

He must have spoken aloud, as Miss Marston handed it to him. It was postmarked July 7th, 1888 and bore a large thumb-mark on one corner. There was no address, but Watson did not expect one. None of it was precisely identical - just like Miss Mary Marston they were all a mockery of the reality - but it was close enough.

There was no doubt that this woman was not who she claimed to be; she knew her story too well, said it too carefully. Watson wanted little more than to run her straight to the police. But she could have just as easily been an actress who had been paid off. Imitating the dead was not a crime and unfortunately nor was it enough evidence to tie her to the murders of Drebber and Stangerson. He could not act in haste as he had before. To trap whoever was behind this, he needed to be patient and clear headed, to wait for them to make some mistake.

He asked for each piece of evidence in turn in the hope that one of them would shed some new light on the case, but he knew how each would pan out. All of the letters were by the same hand and none “could be more unlike” her father’s. Whoever had written them had even taken the pains to write with Greek  _ e _ ’s and a twirl on each final  _ s _ \- both clearly forced. But they told him nothing about the true identity of the man behind them.

“What do you intend to do?” Dr. Holmes asked at last, his gaze fixed upon his client.

“That is exactly what I want to ask you.”

“Then we shall most certainly go,” he answered with a grim smile. “I will accompany you.”

“You are very kind. I have led a retired life and have no friends whom I could appeal to. If I am here at six, will it do?”

Dr. Holmes nodded and played his role as he had practiced over the centuries, “I shall look out for you at six. If you’ll allow me to keep the papers, I may look into the matter before then.”

“Au revoir,” she said with an impish smile and took her leave.

He wondered if she knew who she was imitating and to what ends. What would his dear departed Mary think if she saw him now, frozen in time, chasing threads of the past? But this woman was not Mary, glaringly so, and that made the reminder all the more painful. He wanted so badly to confront her, to make her give up her foul sport, but there was more to the incident than Miss Marston - or whatever her real name was. If Dr. Holmes was not mistaken, a man’s life was in danger and he had the chance to save him, if only he could solve the mystery in front of him.

As soon as he heard the outside door shut behind her, he threw on his jacket and hurried down the stairs to see her walking away along the sidewalk without a care in the world. He paused to give a coin to an old beggar sitting by the door to create a little distance between them, before he followed after her at a leisurely pace. They did not have long to walk, as she descended into the Baker Street underground station. He followed after, picking up a paper on his way, and took a seat in the next car over, with a clear view through the connecting door. He pretended to read his paper as they crossed beneath the city in mere minutes with only a low roar to betray how fast they were traveling through the dark tunnels.

After only fifteen minutes, with frequent stops, she stood and got off the train. He followed her at a respectable distance up the escalator, to another train that traveled on rails above ground, on level with the usual traffic. The rush of movement outside the windows was distracting, but it was a relief to be back on the surface. Finally, after another short ride, she disembarked in southern Camberwell, near the old King’s College Hospital.

From there, she continued on along a busy road, and eventually turned onto a residential side street. At last, she arrived at a large house. A taller middle aged woman, wearing a dress that would not have looked out of place when Watson was a young man, opened the door and greeted Miss Marston warmly. But there was nothing he could see about the woman or her home that suggested she was anything other than possibly a little old-fashioned. He resisted the urge to break the facade once and for all and question them lest they vanish as Mr. Hope had done, but he had no evidence of a crime, and even if he did, such a rash action would inevitably cost him the man he was truly after.

He stopped some ways away to watch the house, but no one else entered or exited in all the time he waited. Finally, he jotted down the address, and returned home.

Dr. Holmes sank into his usual chair by the empty fireplace, the case running circles through his mind as it had the whole way back in the cab. There was hardly enough evidence to speculate, and he very well knew the dangers of trying to draw conjectures from mere wisps of smoke, but unlike Holmes, he could not simply turn off that train of thought and bring his attention around to some other passion. Instead, the mystery stewed as he turned it this way and that, searching for an ever-elusive answer. He leaned back and resisted the painful urge to find a cigarette.

He kept coming back to the same question: why replicate Sherlock Holmes’s old cases? Miss Marston had come to him specifically, perhaps her employer had figured out his true identity and was attempting to wreak some twisted revenge. He had certainly made more than his share of enemies over the long years. But if it was revenge, it had taken a strange form. It seemed more likely that Miss Marston had come to him merely because he was the one who had published that advertisement in the paper about the ring as Holmes had done. But to what ends it had all been orchestrated, he could hardly fathom. It almost felt like he was being drawn into some horrible game against an unknown mastermind - he shuddered at the thought.

He didn’t like dancing around, playing this criminal’s game, but he had to be careful. He wasn’t the only one who knew the old cases and the criminal very well knew that now. He had already made the mistake of revealing his hand too soon, he couldn’t risk it again. But still, he could not in good conscience waste an opportunity to spare an innocent man’s life. Enough time had been wasted already while he was chasing after Miss Marston.

He picked up the phone and called Mrs. Houghton. He was met with a recording, so he left his message after the electronic tone - “Hello, I am afraid the man responsible for the staged murders you brought to my attention last month will strike again tonight. I have reason to believe his next victim will be a man identified as Mr. Bartholomew Sholto, living at Pondicherry Lodge in Norwood. The culprits will likely attempt to climb in through a second floor window. I will be out at six to pursue another avenue of investigation, but expect to meet you there around eleven. Good bye,” with that somewhat uncertain farewell, he hung up.

Only once that was taken care of did he realize that he had all but forgotten to phone Mr. Hess about the solution to his case, which Dr. Holmes hastily remedied.

* * *

Dr. Holmes met Miss Mary Marston outside 221 Baker Street a little after six that evening. He spotted the same beggar he saw there earlier that day, slumped against the wall not far from the door. The poor man didn’t seem to notice them as they hailed a cab to the Lyceum Theater. There they were met by a small, dark, brisk man who was dressed like a proper coachman. Dr. Holmes half expected to be taken to their destination in a horse-drawn four-wheeler, but instead a sleek black car was waiting for them, and so they drove off in a swirl of lights and a blur of scenery.

Miss Marston had brought another piece of evidence with her - the paper bearing “the sign of the four” - so in lieu of conversation, Dr. Holmes busied himself with pretending to examine the prop as his mind wandered in weary circles.

So long ago, in a night not unlike this one, he had sat in the back of a horse-drawn cab, between his beloved Mary and his dear friend, Sherlock Holmes. It had been a wild night, the beginning of a case he would never forget, and now... He nearly sighed at the memory of his lovely Mary. She was truly a beautiful woman who had died much too young. What did the young woman beside him have to gain from dragging her from her grave to play a part in this ridiculous ruse.

Dr. Holmes wanted to turn to his companion and demand why? What was the purpose of attempting to recreate the past like this? It tore at his heart to see his memories twisted so. But he was a detective and he had a case to solve. They both knew it was a farce, they both knew no one was being fooled, and yet it continued on. And he let it in the hopes that maybe it would lead him to some clue that would put an end to it once and for all.

Finally, they arrived at Coldharbour Lane in South London. They stopped in front of a derelict apartment that could have been the same one he had visited ages ago with his dear Mary and Sherlock Holmes. Dr. Holmes and Mary Marston were led inside, into a bright yellow room, inhabited by a tall, nervous man, who was bald aside from a ring of red hair around his head. Mr. Thaddeus Sholto, as he identified himself, dawdled and delayed while Dr. Holmes wondered whether the police had found Mr. Bartholomew Sholto and if he was alive or dead. Dr. Holmes found himself agreeing with Miss Marston as she voiced her impatience.

He hardly listened as they recited the whole scene from memory, as he had written it up years ago. It was all an act, as ill intentioned as it was preposterous, but Dr. Holmes went along with it in the hopes that somehow it would lead him somewhere, to some evidence he could use to bring it all to an end before anyone else got hurt. Mr. Sholto explained that his father, Major Sholto, was a friend of Captain Marston. They had taken a treasure out of India together, but when the captain came to take his share, he suffered a sudden heart attack and died. Major Sholto, afraid of being accused of Captain Marston’s death, hid the body.

That mystery solved, he went on to recount how his father had been pursued by a peg-legged man. With the power of hindsight, Dr. Holmes knew him to be an escaped convict by the name of Jonathan Small who stole the treasure and was responsible for the murder of the real Bartholomew Sholto all those years ago. As the story went, Major Sholto eventually died. As he died, the peg-legged man - now attributed a hairy face - appeared at the window. The Major had hidden the treasure and its location vanished with his dying breaths. Per his father’s last wishes, Mr. Thaddeus Sholto had shared what little of the treasure his father had not hidden with Miss Marston, despite his brother’s dissent.

And now, the treasure had been found in Pondicherry Lodge, the family home now occupied by Mr. Bartholomew Sholto. So, they were finally off to the lodge to beg Bartholomew Sholto to share it with Miss Marston. Dr. Holmes breathed a sigh of relief as they piled back into the car and set off to pursue the only real mystery of the evening - was Mr. Sholto alive or dead?

It was not long after eleven at night when the car stopped and Mr. Thaddeus Sholto declared that they had arrived at Pondicherry Lodge. Dr. Holmes and the small company of actors who accompanied him stepped out of the car to discover that the police had already arrived at the rundown mansion.

“What’s your business here?” the officer stationed outside called to them as they approached the house. He looked like a local officer, fresh toward the beginning of his shift.

Mr. Sholto hesitated, but that was well within character. “I-I’m Thaddeus Sholto. I’m here to see my- my brother, Bartholomew - he lives here. What’s going on here?”

“And who are you?” The officer turned to Dr. Holmes and Miss Marston.

Dr. Holmes stepped aside with pointed gallantry to allow Miss Marston to speak first.

“Mary Marston,” she curtsied at the officer, “It’s quite a long story, but the short of it is that my father, Captain Marston, knew the late Major Sholto. Mr. Sholto, here, was bringing me to meet his brother.”

“And you?” the officer asked, turning on Dr. Holmes with a sharp gaze that said he knew the doctor had purposefully put off his own answer.

“Doctor Jonathan Holmes,” he said, ready for the long night to be over. “I believe Inspector Houghton is expecting us.”

The officer held up his two-way radio and reported their arrival to D.I. Houghton. Dr. Holmes could hardly make out Mrs. Houghton’s voice on the other end, it was so heavily clouded by an electronic buzz.

“Detective-Inspector Houghton will be down in a moment, she’ll explain everything to you,” the officer said as he returned the radio to his belt.

“Oh, something terrible has happened, I know it!” Mr. Sholto exclaimed, wringing his hands to get rid of some of the nervous energy which he had in abundance.

Fortunately for all of them, they did not have long to wait as Mrs. Houghton soon arrived, followed by her partner on the force, Inspector Gregson. “I’m sorry to be the bearer of bad news. Would it be alright if we asked each of you a few questions?”

“Oh dear, oh dear!” Mr. Sholto said, somehow even more agitated than before. “What terrible thing has happened? My brother, is he okay?”

“I’ll tell you what I can, if you’ll come with us.”

Inspector Gregson led Mr. Sholto and Miss Marston away as Mrs. Houghton hung back with Dr. Holmes. “We were too late,” she admitted as soon as the others were out of earshot. “According to the crime scene techs, he was probably killed sometime last night with a strong vegetable alkaloid, and brought over here post-mortem. It was all done up just like Rowe and Easton, we’re working on identifying the victim now. But you know more about it than we do.”

Dr. Holmes shook his head. “I confess, I don’t know anything about the victim. I have some pieces, but hardly enough to tie it all together. Hopefully Miss Marston and Mr. Sholto will provide the missing link, but I fear our man is too clever for that.”

“Well, what’s your piece?”

As briefly as he could, he explained everything from the arrival of Miss Marston at 221B Baker Street to the real story of The Sign of the Four.

“Well, you were right about Bartholomew Sholto,” she said when he was done. “This place was abandoned until it was recently purchased under that name. Some of the damage looks like it was done since then, which lines up with your story. When we arrived, we found the place abandoned and a man dead in the upstairs room - poisoned with a little wooden dart stuck in his neck. He was dressed like someone out of the 1800’s - to match the decor, I suppose. I can show you the scene if you like.”

Dr. Holmes shook his head. “I don’t need to get in the way. I would like to see the photographs when you have them, however. Did you find the trap door in the ceiling?”

Mrs. Houghton nodded. “It was a normal attic door, someone just concealed it. We also found those footsteps you mentioned inside, they look like they were made by a child.”

“It was an Andaman Islander,” Dr. Holmes explained. “If my memory serves me, they are a small, vicious people - a grown man may be the size of a child.”

Mrs. Houghton was looking at him with a bewildered expression. “The prints we found are those of a child.”

“I’m sorry,” Dr. Holmes said hastily, “Perhaps some of my knowledge of the world is outdated.”

Mrs. Houghton looked unconvinced, but she continued nonetheless, “They were working with a man with a peg-leg, like you said. The child came in through the roof and helped the man up through the window with a rope that we found in the room - there were prints everywhere. If there was a treasure, it was long gone by the time we arrived. Officers with dogs are out now trying to track them.”

Dr. Holmes chuckled. He remembered how that had gone. He and Holmes had followed Toby all the way across the city only to find a barrel of tar in lumber yard that must have confounded the dog’s nose. But they found the right trail eventually.

“What is it?” Mrs. Houghton asked.

“Just some fond, old memories.”

She nodded in understanding.

“If they’re doing it by the book, the dog will only be able to follow them so far. I would suggest you start by searching the river for the  _ Aurora _ , but I fear our man is too clever for that.”

“We’ll see if your friends can’t tell us anything.” She jerked her head after them.

Dr. Holmes nodded. “If you call me in the morning, you can tell me the news and I may have some idea of how to proceed by then.”

“Sure thing. ‘Night, Doctor.”

“Good night, Inspector.” Dr. Holmes inclined his head in the suggestion of a bow and returned home at last.

* * *

The next morning, Dr. Holmes woke rather after his usual fashion. It had been a long night and as such, he came to slowly and reluctantly. It was a bright morning, the cheery light streamed in through the windows, prodding Dr. Holmes out of bed. He took a leisurely breakfast, though he had to make it for himself, it no longer being typical for the landlady to be responsible for her tenants meals.

As he cooked and ate, he rolled the case back and forth in his mind. At last, he was interrupted by the ringing of his telephone.

“Dr. Holmes?” Mrs. Houghton’s voice sounded on the other end.

“Speaking,” Dr. Holmes replied. “Inspector?”

“Yes, I’ve just gotten back into the office and thought I’d give you a call. You were right about the dogs; the trail led them straight to a barrel of tar on the docks. I’ve found records for the  _ Aurora _ , according to the Environment Agency it’s registered to Mordecai Smith. I’m still waiting to hear back from him. We interviewed Marston and Sholto after you left last night. Sholto claims he’s just an actor who was hired to put on a little show, and didn’t know anything. We’ve got him in custody now and have a warrant to search his flat and see what we can find, but we can’t hold him for long. Marston checks out alright; she just received a few strange letters.

We’ve also ID’d the victim. He’s a man named Nelson Duvall who lived a few blocks away from where we found him, and went missing a couple days ago. There’s something not entirely above-board about him, maybe just tax evasion, but we’re looking into it now.”

He sat in silence for a moment, just turning the deluge of facts over in his mind.

“Got anything?”

Finally, he answered, “I would be surprised if Mr. Sholto or Miss Marston is who they claim to be. What we need is evidence of collusion. If you found a phone in Mr. Sholto’s flat, would you be able to use it to locate his correspondents?”

“We should be able to.”

“I imagine he would have a disposable phone similar to the one you found belonging to Mr. Hope. If we can use that to locate his correspondents, if we’re careful we should be able to corner them before they vanish. It would be best if we could give the impression that we’re still looking for the  _ Aurora _ , in the hope that they may lower their guard.”

“I’ll check in on Mr. Smith when I have the chance. We’ll keep an eye out for that phone and I’ll tell you what we find.”

“Thank you. In the meantime, I may pay Miss Marston a visit.”

“Are you sure? Everything about her checks out. She seems even more confused than we are.”

Dr. Holmes shook his head - though he belatedly realized Mrs. Houghton couldn’t see it. “It cannot be a coincidence.”

He caught a cab to southern Camberwell, back to the house he had Miss Marston had returned to after their first interview. He didn’t walk up to the door, or even the front walkway, instead content to watch from a few houses away. It was a quiet, grand old house, a little worn around the edges and minimally cared for, but nothing inherently suspect. So, Dr. Holmes began his way around the block, going door to door.

“Excuse me, I was wondering if you’ve seen anything unusual in the neighborhood lately?”

The question was met with many more or less pointed no’s. A man with an injured leg who had spent most of the day bored at home gave a more descriptive, but not much more informative response; “Well, there were some rowdy kids shouting up and down the street all last night, I could hardly get a lick of sleep, and the workers at Mrs. Roger’s place down the street make the most dreadful noises all through the day. It’s impossible to get some bed rest to heal up my poor leg.”

When that failed, Dr. Holmes tried a more direct approach. “Do you know anything about the residents of the large house at the end there?”

He was most often met by shrugs. The old man remarked, “They have some strange visitors. There was one man, a big burly fellow, I didn’t like the look of him. If my leg had been right, I would have gone straight up to him and given him a piece of my mind.”

One woman provided, “They just moved in. The place was for sale for the longest time, I’m glad it’s finally sold, but I haven’t seen the new owners around much.”

“Could you describe the people who live there?”

“It’s a woman and her grown daughter, I think,” she said, “though I’ve only seen them once or twice.”

“What do they look like?”

“Well, the older woman is tall, with short dark hair, or maybe she keeps it up in a bun. She couldn’t be much older than me, I don’t think. Her daughter is blonde, a lot smaller, she looks young, but she must be an adult. Now that you mention it, I don’t know if they are related, they look so different, but I suppose families come in all shapes and sizes.”

“You said they aren’t around much. How often do you see them?”

“It seems like there’s usually someone in the house, though it’s hard to tell with just two people in so many rooms. I just don’t see them around the neighborhood much, they seem to keep to themselves and all those people they have over. But I think I saw them when they moved in, and sometimes I see them coming or going.”

“They have a lot of visitors?”

“Yeah, all sorts.”

“Could you describe them for me?”

“I don’t know, they’re all different people. There was a large rough looking man that I saw a few times a little while ago, but otherwise I don’t know if I could pick any of them out of a crowd.”

“Did he by any chance have a particularly red face?”

“Yeah, I think he did, now that you mention it.”

Unfortunately she couldn’t tell him much more. Others could attest to the residents of the house and their visitors; young and old, men and women, from all walks of life, but none could tell him any more about Miss Marston. He returned earlier the next day in the hopes that he would have the chance to question some of the people who hadn’t been home when he called the first time.

He was just walking down the street between interviews when a young woman called out from behind him, “Dr. Holmes!” It was Miss Martson, of course.

He gave a start, but when he turned around to face her he had schooled his features into, if not a smile, something bemused rather than affronted. “Miss Marston,” he greeted her with a nod.

“What are you doing here?” she asked in exaggerated surprise.

“I was hoping your neighbors might provide some insight into why you in particular were targeted by whoever sent those letters.” The lie came out easily, perhaps more easily than it should have.

“Surely you don’t think it could be one of them?” She almost sounded amused.

“Clearly someone has been keeping an eye on you. They may know or have seen something.”

She crossed her arms over her chest as though to shield herself from prying eyes. “Oh, that’s just horrible. It will be such a relief when you’ve tracked down whoever is behind this. Why would someone do such a thing?”

“I don’t know,” Dr. Holmes said, more pointedly than he ought. And because he had already made one mistake, he pressed a little more and asked, “Do you know why you might be targeted?”

“I don’t know, I’m not anyone of any particular importance, not like you.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, you must be the only one in the world - not the only unofficial detective, but certainly the only one appealed to by the officials when they are out of their depths.” Her words were familiar, but it wasn’t something Mary had said. It took him a moment to realize that she was paraphrasing Sherlock Holmes himself.

“You’re very kind,” Dr. Holmes said, not entirely graciously, “But I am hardly the first nor the only. You must have some unique quality of your own,” he attempted.

“As you know, I am but a lowly governess, an orphan without a place in the world, who is merely the unsuspecting victim of some strange happenstance.”

“Why? You don’t have to do this,” Dr. Holmes exclaimed at last, unable and unwilling to keep up the tired charade when even she acknowledged it.

“What are you talking about?” Miss Marston asked, the very portrait of confusion. “I assure you, nothing I have done has been against my will.”

Dr. Holmes merely sighed and shook his head.


	3. A Break in the Chain

To Dr. Jonathan Holmes’s surprise, when he returned home from his investigation, the landlady greeted him at the door looking more than a little frazzled.

“Dr. Holmes, there you are! You’ve had two visitors while you’ve been out. Talia Houghton came by to say that she has the phone numbers you asked for.”

“Excellent,” Dr. Holmes replied - that, at least, was going just as planned. “Who else?”

“An old man. He let himself in and said he was going to wait in your sitting room - said he was a friend of yours.” She dropped her voice a little. “He hardly made it up the stairs, I was worried his legs were going to give out.”

Dr. Holmes recognized that description. The man was no doubt disguised as an old sailor, no doubt. He only belatedly remembered to say, “Thank you.”

There was one player absent whom he had not expected to make an appearance. But it seemed here he was, right on cue; it was two days after his dear Mary had come to ask for Holmes’s assistance when an old sailor had arrived in their sitting room and insisted he had some knowledge as to the whereabouts of the  _ Aurora _ that he would only deliver to the detective himself.

Did the culprit think Dr. Holmes needed some help to solve their little puzzle? A hint? They had already made a poor imitation of his dear departed Mary, he had thought they considered him a sufficient enough substitute for the detective himself and would not disturb his dear old friend’s watery grave, but apparently they had decided to bring him in after all.

Dr. Holmes clenched his fists in anger. Could they not let the dead lie where they were? He had already suffered through their deaths once, he did not need these cruel, mocking reminders. He knew that the whole world he had once known was gone, he did not need a hollow recreation.

“Is everything alright?” the landlady asked - he heard her as though from some distance away.

Dr. Holmes forced himself to calm down. He would see what the mastermind behind this whole contrived game had in store for him now. Perhaps this would provide him with some fresh clue he could use to bring all of them to justice. He let out a long breath and unclenched his fists.

“I’m fine,” he said, though he did not even convince himself. “I suppose I’ll go up and see what this old friend of mine has to say.”

With that, he climbed the stairs up to the flat at 221B. He found the door unlocked as he had not left it - someone attempting to imitate Sherlock Holmes ought to, at the very least, have some small portion of his skills. Dr. Holmes stepped inside, locking the door behind him just in case he needed to detain his guest.

Sure enough, seated in what had once been Holmes’s and was now his usual place by the fire, was an old sailor. The man’s face was mostly covered by a scarf and bushy facial hair, no doubt fake. The distinctive dirt caked on his boot clearly indicated that he had spent a lot of time on Baker Street of late, and they did look familiar - it seemed the homeless man he had used as a blind when he was following Miss Marston had been watching him in turn.

“Hello, Sherlock Holmes, is it?” he asked without any attempt at pleasantries.

Keen, bright gray eyes stared back at him. Somehow the sight of this imposter made his blood boil even more than the mockery of Mary had. Perhaps it was his own fault for giving the culprit so much to work off of in imitating Holmes. All the others had been superficial replicas at best - after all, it was impossible to replicate someone’s appearance from a mere description - but for some reason this one cut him to the core. He felt tears threatening to moisten his eyes. He knew Holmes was dead, he needed no reminder.

“I am he,” the man said simply, his quick, high, somewhat strident voice was clear and young and achingly familiar.

Watson wanted to stand up and punch him, to demand that whoever it was stop his damned charade and face him as himself. It was impossible to repeat the past, no matter what anyone may want, he knew that and the culprit ought to learn it!

But Watson did none of those things. Instead he demanded, “What do you want with me?”

The man hesitated, but soon came to an answer, “I am here to see an old friend, is that not enough?”

“What? Do you not have news about the  _ Aurora _ ?” Watson’s voice came out harsher than he knew it should have if he wanted to get evidence out of this man, but he was beyond thinking clearly.

“I do have news of the  _ Aurora _ as well, but I found my personal reason for visiting to be more important.”

“And pray tell, what is that?”

The actor’s eyes fell as though he had actually been injured by Watson’s scathing tone. He stood and for an instant Watson readied for a fight.

Slowly, the man lifted his hand to his scarf and drew it away from his face. Watson's every instinct screamed to stop him, to push him out the door before he could do more damage than he had already done by his impersonation. But Watson stood transfixed as familiar features gradually made themselves known. Next, the man removed bushy white fake eyebrows and whiskers, and lastly took off a white wig, which he held in front of him in both hands with an entirely sheepish air.

“Hello, my dear old friend,” Sherlock Holmes said at long last.

It took all of Watson's constitution not to faint on the spot. He was left breathless as though the wind had been knocked out of him, standing face to face with a ghost.

The ghost peered back at him with sharp, piercing gray eyes that practically shone with all the emotion that dared not encroach upon his thin, firm lips. His black, close cut hair, messy from the wig, framed a narrow, eager face that was much more gaunt than Watson remembered. Still, his hawk-like nose and square, prominent chin gave him an air of alertness and determination. Now that he stood at his full height, Watson remembered just how tall and lean he was. The sailor’s costume hung off of him, suddenly baggy about his thin frame. His long, delicate fingers, as always blotted with ink and chemicals, fidgeted nervously with the white wig.

It was utterly impossible. Watson may very well have conjured the vision straight from his memory. There were small differences here and there, but for all Watson knew, the man before him could have just stepped out of his past. Holmes looked little older than 40, not well over 100 and long dead besides. Watson’s brain recoiled and time seemed to stop in its tracks or perhaps even reel backwards from the shock.

“You- you’re dead,” he stuttered in shock that threatened to approach hysterics. “You died at Reichenbach. Moriarty-”

Holmes deliberately placed the wig upon his chair and took a step toward Watson so that there was only a foot between them. He held out his arms and took Watson’s hands in his own. He was solid and warm - real,  _ alive _ . A hundred years seemed to fall away around them, as though it had all been a hazy dream.

“I am alive,” Holmes said, his voice calm and reassuring with only the slightest hint of a waver, “As are you. You are not the only one who has been deceptively bereaved.”

And so Watson stood at the heart of a paradox. Perhaps they were both dead, perhaps he was hallucinating, perhaps it was all an impossible dream and he would wake up back in the home he once shared with Mary, perhaps, perhaps, perhaps… The possibilities swirled around his skull and poured out his ears. But there Holmes stood in front of him, his hands warm and solid and  _ alive _ in Watson’s own. No imposter could be this indescribably familiar.

“How?” was all Watson could stammer out.

Holmes gave him a crooked smile. “That’s the question. I can only begin to answer it, perhaps you may be able to fill in the rest. Come, I’m sure we have much to discuss.” He led the way to the settee, not relinquishing his hold on Watson - he could feel Holmes’s hand shaking a little in his own.

“How I reached my 160th birthday, I cannot say,” Holmes continued once they were comfortable. “I assumed I was some fluke, a freak of nature or a cosmic mistake - utterly inexplicable. I hardly expected you to share my sorry fate, but I cannot deny that I am glad to see you alive.”

The man before him displayed more of his heart than Holmes ever had. The emotion in his words was more likely a figment of Watson’s memory tinged by ages of wishful thinking than any reality. Holmes had cared for him, that Watson knew, but never like this.

Holmes seemed to take Watson’s wide-eyed gaping for incredulity and explained, “I am not quite so miraculous as to have returned from the dead. I faced Professor Moriarty at the Reichenbach Falls, prepared, as you know, to face my death. But at the last instant, I managed to wrest myself from the Professor’s grasp and he tumbled to his death alone. Perhaps it is because I evaded death then that it has missed me since, but that is hardly a scientific hypothesis and it does little to explain your situation.

“Having bested Professor Moriarty at Reichenbach, a wiser man would have returned the way he came and resumed his life the better for it, but I did not. At the time, I believe I rationalized my flight with fear of being pursued by Moriarty’s men, but even after I bested each of them in turn, I still hesitated to return. And so, the years passed and I remained on the run. Somehow it was all too easy to come up with excuses not to come home; it had already been too long, I would only disrupt the lives that had gone on without me. It built upon itself so naturally that before long it was too late. I could not have imagined that you would still be alive as I was.

“For the first several years - or it may have been closer to twenty - I continued working as a detective, traveling here or there under various pseudonyms, solving cases for hire or sport and writing my monographs - perhaps one or two of them reached you in England. Then the Great War came and Mycroft, who aided me all those years, until his death,” - Holmes’s face fell at the mention of his long dead brother - “He called upon me to spy for England in her hour of need, and that is how I have lived since. I was stationed in Germany through the World Wars and then sent to Moscow.

“For the past twenty years or more, I have been serving as a humble bartender, forgotten by the world at large. Once I eavesdropped on the most powerful men in Russia, but they have long since moved on, and I fear my British employers believe me dead as I assumed you were. When I heard word of the ‘Sherlock Holmes murders,’ as the press has been calling them, I decided it was past time I return to London, perhaps try my hand at solving the case and meet this Dr. Jonathan Holmes whose name I had heard in connection with the mystery. I could not have imagined that this promising upstart could possibly be you, but I would want it no other way.”

Holmes’s eyes practically glimmered as he looked at Watson, so earnestly, like there was nothing he wanted more in the world that to see him there.

“And so you have my tale,” Holmes concluded.

It was all too much. The way Holmes was looking at him, that impossible, incredible story, the fact that this man before him was such a perfect rendition of the dear old friend Watson had known so long ago.

“I can’t believe it” - Watson may have said the words aloud.

Even his wildest imaginings could not have created such a tale. And, as Holmes had always said, when the impossible was eliminated, what remained could only be the truth. Still, even as the evidence stood before his very eyes, as he held it in his hands, he could not believe it.

“I see that you’ve done very well for yourself,” Holmes remarked, cutting through Watson’s erratic thoughts.

“I’ve only been following your methods,” Watson insisted as his mind raced to catch up with the conversation. “I owe it all to your tutelage.”

“And a century of experience, no doubt. I confess, even I have been able to glean little of your history. To your neighbors, you are known only as a fixture, of course none are old enough to remember more.”

“It was after Mary’s death,” Watson began haltingly. “She died in ‘93.”

Holmes’s grasp on Watson’s hand tightened a little. “I didn’t know.”

Watson just shook his head. “It was long ago.” Watson paused a moment to collect himself before he continued, “I started to take some interest in crime for something to do, as a distraction. After you, well I always read the criminal section in the paper, and I even took up a bit of a hobby reading the agony section in search of something beyond the usual twaddle.

“It didn’t amount to much until the Adair murder. I was interested in it from the first; it seemed like exactly the sort of thing you would go for. Our old friend Lestrade was on the case. The papers made it sound like he was onto something, but I knew well enough by then that he couldn’t make head or tail of it. It got so bad that one evening he showed up at my practice and asked if I could take a look, that maybe, after working with you, I might be able to shine some light where they couldn’t. We caught him more by coincidence than anything, but after that it became something of a regular thing.

“Eventually, I moved back to Baker Street and started back up your practice. I was never as successful as you were, but I made do. I don’t know why my age hasn’t caught up with me, but I confess I haven’t paid it much heed. I changed my name because I ran into some trouble with the records department on account of my age. There was some suspicion of fraud - that was probably the first time I realized I should have been dead. So, I thought I might as well take your name, since I was already living in your place.”

“You certainly do it justice,” Holmes said with a smile. “It’s a shame you haven’t published accounts of your own adventures. I particularly enjoyed the ones you published while I was on the run. Meanwhile, I’ve been playing the part of a man by the name of Ivan, but I fear another John Holmes would be redundant, so perhaps it is time I dig back up my old name, if you have no objection to sharing it.”

“Of course! It’s yours after all.”

“Thank you, I’m honored to share it.” Then Holmes changed topic and remarked, “I don’t suppose you require some aid in your current case? I have discovered that the  _ Aurora _ is in the hands of a fellow named Johnson who was asked by a man with a peg-leg to repair its fully functional rudder. I was informed that it will be leaving at seven o’clock tonight. I have stationed a street boy by Johnson’s yard to signal when they launch. All we need to do is commandeer a faster boat of our own and the chase is on!” He rubbed his hands together in enthusiasm.

His enthusiasm was contagious, but Dr. Holmes had already considered and dismissed such a plan in favor of something the culprits would be less likely to expect. Still, Watson struggled to find the right words to explain. “I tried that with Jefferson Hope, doing the same thing you did and expecting the same result, but he fled before we could catch him. The man behind these murders clearly knows your old cases, so we have to stay one step ahead of him. I actually have a plan of my own...” Watson faltered.

Sherlock Holmes leaned toward Watson to examine him with an expression of utmost interest. Watson was convinced he hadn’t explained it half as well as he should have, but Holmes was impassive as ever.

“Go on,” Holmes urged.

“Well, Mi-” Watson corrected himself, “Detective-Inspector Houghton came by earlier today to say that she has the culprits’ cell phone numbers, which she can use to locate them - I’m not exactly sure how it works, but it does. That way, we can find their hideout without them ever knowing and ambush them there. There are already officers watching the river as backup, just in case, but hopefully we won’t need them.”

Holmes watched him with the most peculiar expression. Watson was half convinced it was disgust and half convinced it was ridicule and somehow, between the two, he managed to find the space to hope that it was pride. It was as though he was some fascinating specimen, the likes of which Holmes had never before encountered.

“Very well,” Holmes said at last, leaping to his feet, “If that’s the case then we have no time to waste. Shall I call a cab to take us to the Scotland Yard to speak with this Detective-Inspector?”

Watson shook his head, still bewildered by it all. “I can just use the telephone. We’ll meet her wherever they’re hiding out.”

The doctor forced himself to his feet and made his way over to the telephone. Holmes watched keenly over his shoulder as he dialed Mrs. Houghton’s number from memory.

“Hello,” she said, “Dr. Holmes?”

Dr. Holmes nodded though he knew she couldn’t see him.

“Did your landlady tell you? I got the phone numbers and I’ve located Small not far from the river. We’re ready to go in and arrest all of them unless you have something else in mind.”

“No, that’s exactly what I had in mind,” Dr. Holmes said with some relief. “What’s the address? We can meet you there.”

He scribbled down the location as she recited it.

“We’ve found where the  _ Aurora _ is being kept,” Dr. Holmes added, just in case. “It’s in for repairs at Johnson’s yard, not far from there. If they flee, that’s where they’ll leave from.”

“Great. I’ll tell the officers who have been patrolling the river to get over there.”

“If the boat is about to depart, a boy will stand by the dock and wave a white handkerchief.”

“I’ll pass it on. See you soon.”

“Yes, see you soon,” Dr. Holmes said and hung up the phone.

Holmes was still watching him with a quizzical expression.

“What is it?” Watson asked a little more tersely than he had intended. “If I’ve done something wrong, I ought to know before we put it into action.”

Holmes shook his head. “No, you haven’t done anything wrong. I’m sorry for getting in your way, you seem to have everything well under control.”

Watson wondered if this was what it felt like to be an Inspector of the Yard working with Sherlock Holmes. Maybe he was just imagining the sharp undercurrent of ridicule, but whether it was there or not, he needed to focus on everything that was about to unfold that very evening, “We ought to be going - if you wish to see the resolution of the case.”

“I wouldn’t miss it!” Holmes declared, any hint of an edge gone from his voice as though it had never been.

And so they were off, speeding through the busy London streets. They spent most of the ride in a tense silence. Watson attempted to focus, to make sure that no detail had been forgotten, while Holmes reclined almost languidly in his seat beside him, staring out at the city as it passed them by. Holmes made no effort to begin a conversation, and despite all of the questions that churned in the back of his mind, Watson was at a loss for words.

They saw the flashing lights of several police cars before they reached the address. Watson told the cabby to stop there and they walked over to the perimeter. Holmes remained silent and let Watson take the lead for the time being.

“What’s going on?” Watson asked the officer watching over the scene. With Holmes watching everything over his shoulder, Watson felt like a rookie officer being tested by a superior, but he forged on all the same.

“There’s nothing to see here-” the officer began to recite, but stopped short. “You’re Dr. Holmes? You work with D.I. Houghton?”

The doctor nodded.

“Everything’s mostly taken care of here. D.I. Houghton is just finishing up.”

“Good, I have to talk to her.”

“After you.” Holmes helped Watson under the perimeter with exaggerated politesse.

“Who’s he?” the officer asked.

“He’s with me,” the doctor explained the complicated situation as succinctly as he could.

The officer seemed to accept it and they made their way past the line of police cars without further incident. The doctor soon spotted Mrs. Houghton leaning against one of the cars, talking with Detective Inspector Charles Gregson, her partner in the squad.

“Dr. Holmes,” Inspector Gregson called out to them, “Talia said you’d be here. I’m afraid you’re running late.”

“Not too late, I hope,” the doctor said.

“That depends,” Mrs. Houghton said darkly. “I hope you’re not looking for Jonathan Small because he was dead when we arrived. According to a couple of men who were working for him, the child that Small kidnapped killed him with his own poison when she tried to escape. So, all we’ve got left now are the child, who we can’t talk to until we’ve found a translator, some people who were working with Small, and Patrick and Alan Smith - you’d recognize them as Mordecai and Jim - who claim they were just hired by Small to get the boat.”

“What about Miss Marston?” he asked urgently.

“We’ve just traced one of Small’s contacts to the address she gave you. Do you think it’s safe to bring her in for questioning?”

“It shouldn’t tell her employer any more than he already knows, now that we’ve found Small - or at least his men. Do you have enough evidence for an arrest?”

“Would you say she’s a flight risk?”

“Certainly.”

“In that case, I think we have enough evidence to hold her for a little while, at least,” Mrs. Houghton said with a glance at Inspector Gregson.

“Then we have not a minute to waste,” Dr. Holmes declared.

All four of them piled into a police car, Holmes and Watson in the back and Mrs. Houghton at the wheel. Once they were comfortably outside of the perimeter, Mrs. Houghton glanced at Sherlock Holmes through the rear-view mirror.

“So, who are you?” she asked. “I take it he’s the ‘we’ you mentioned on the phone.”

“Sherlock Holmes, at your service,” he said with a flourish, despite the cramped quarters.

“What? Is he your brother visiting from out of town?”

Holmes chuckled and Watson had to bite back laughter as he answered, “No, he’s an old friend. He’s the one who inspired me to become a consulting detective - he’s the original.”

“You flatter me,” Holmes said. “I am but a visitor who has been away from London for much too long.”

“I see.” Mrs. Houghton sounded a little less than convinced.

“You’re a consulting detective too?” Inspector Gregson asked with a glance over his shoulder at Holmes.

“I merely dabble in deduction,” Holmes demurred. “I believe I missed your name?”

“Charles Gregson,” he said.

“Detection must run in your family. I take it you are descended from Inspector Tobias Gregson?”

“What? How did you know that?” Inspector Gregson nearly leaped from his seat in surprise despite the seatbelt fastened across his chest.

“I am somewhat familiar with the criminal history of London.”

“I knew Tobias was well known in his day, but I didn’t know people recognized the name even now!” Inspector Gregson exclaimed.

“You do not do your great-grandfather - is it? - enough credit.”

Watson detected a hint of sarcasm in Holmes’s tone, but Inspector Gregson seemed deaf to it as he answered, “Apparently!”

The doctor only half listened as Holmes plunged into an account of some old cases that had involved the late Inspector Gregson, much to the younger Inspector’s amusement. Holmes portrayed the late man of the Yard in a much more flattering light than Watson had ever heard him speak of Inspector Gregson in life. But the doctor had little thought to spare their conversation as he kept an eye on the road, hoping with mounting nervous energy that the impostor, Miss Marston, would still be there when they arrived.

Finally, the car rolled to a stop and they all stepped out. Holmes and Inspector Gregson fell silent as they all hurried to the front door of the darkened house. Mrs. Houghton did the honors of pounding at the door loudly enough to wake anyone who happened to be sleeping inside.

There was no response.

Mrs. Houghton tried again, even louder if possible, and Inspector Gregson rang the doorbell for good measure.

Still, no answer.

“I'll go take a look around back,” Inspector Gregson offered.

Holmes joined him as he went to circle the house. The doctor and Mrs. Houghton were left waiting in the front in case someone came to the door after all.

As soon as the other two were out of earshot, Mrs. Houghton said, keeping her voice low just in case, “Sherlock Holmes, that was the name of the detective in those stories. Who is he really?”

The doctor sighed and shook his head in an attempt to clear it. With everything else, he had forgotten that he had initially mistaken Holmes for an impostor. It still seemed too good to be true.

“That’s his real name. It’s just a coincidence.” The lie even sounded hollow to him, but the truth was even more unbelievable.

“You’re sure?”

The doctor nodded. “I would know him anywhere.” That, at least, was the truth.

“And you don’t think he’s involved?”

“No, he couldn’t be.”

More conversationally, she asked, “So, what’s he doing in London?”

“He heard about the case and it piqued his interest. I don’t know what he’ll do now; I suppose he expected to see me as much as I expected him.”

“He showed up unannounced?”

“Yes, in _ disguise _ ,” the doctor could not help but add. 

She laughed. “He seems like he would.”

“It was a favorite trick of his. At least this time he didn't remove the disguise while my back was turned - I would have fainted from the shock.”

“It's been a while? How do you two know each other?”

“We were flatmates until I got married. A mutual acquaintance introduced us.” He smiled at the old memory, no doubt rosier for all the time that had passed.

“You were married?”

He nodded. “A long time ago.”

Inspector Gregson returned before they could continue. Sherlock Holmes was nowhere to be seen.

“Where’s Holmes?” the doctor asked, a little more exasperated than perplexed.

“I thought he’d come around to join you,” Inspector Gregson said. “He told me he would meet me around front. You’re sure he’s trustworthy?”

The doctor answered reflexively, “I would trust him with my life.”

Inspector Gregson appeared taken aback, but did not question it. Mrs. Houghton gave him a knowing smile.

“He’ll probably make an entrance any time now,” the doctor explained. More importantly, he asked, “Did you find anything around back?”

Inspector Gregson shook his head. “Not a peep or even a footprint to go off of. Either they’re holed up in the house or have been gone for some time. Unfortunately, it hasn’t rained recently enough for there to be any useful footprints.”

“In that case, we have no choice but to enter by force,” Mrs. Houghton said.

However, before anyone could attempt to kick the door down, they all heard a loud creak from inside. The door swung open to reveal Sherlock Holmes standing upon the threshold.

Watson was the first to recover from the initial shock. “I take it the house is empty?”

Watson thought he saw a flicker of disappointment cross Holmes’s face and for an instant he felt a little sorry for his impatience, but Holmes recovered so fast Watson almost suspected he had imagined it.

“You can see for yourselves, if you like,” Holmes said with a wry smile.

They all stepped inside and the four of them searched the house from top to bottom, but Miss Mary Marston was gone without a trace. There was little evidence that anyone had lived there at all and no suggestion of where its former residents could have possibly gone. All that had been left for them to find was a pair of disposable phones sitting in the middle of the dining room table.

Plainclothes officers were stationed in the neighborhood to keep an eye on the abandoned house, but Dr. Holmes did not have high hopes.

* * *

It was getting on toward the middle of the afternoon the next day. Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson had reclaimed what had once been their usual chairs by the fireplace in the sitting room of 221B Baker Street.

“He died in ‘84,” Holmes was saying, “And when the Soviet Union dissolved in ‘91, my mission followed. As the regulars would tell you, I’ve been handy in solving a few of their little problems, but those are mere trifles. I’ve been stagnating, Watson! I’m sorry you have to see me in such a state.”

“You’ve given up on the criminal class of Moscow too?” Watson asked, only half joking.

“Pah!” Holmes exclaimed. “Forget criminals! I’ve been chasing after lost boots and cheating wives.”

Watson gave a dark chuckle. “I’ve had a few of those cases myself. The job of a consulting detective is becoming increasingly obsolete as the police force improves - they’ve co-opted many of your old methods. People come to me mainly for cases outside the officials’ jurisdiction. Ever so often Mrs. Houghton, and sometimes a colleague of hers, will come to me for consultation when they come across something particularly puzzling, but I fear even then most of my expertise is in old cases that they will soon be able to more easily find on their computers. ”

“You underrate yourself and your occupation,” Holmes insisted. “I find the officials often need someone to put the pieces together for them.”

Watson gave him a skeptical look, but did not argue.

“And if I am not mistaken,” Holmes said, sounding quite confident that he was not, “Here one comes now in search of our aid.”

Watson glanced out the window to see Mrs. Houghton walking up to the front door. He heard her knock, followed shortly by the pounding of her footsteps on the stairs. Holmes stood to welcome her into the flat, allowing Watson to remain in his chair.

“Mr. Holmes,” she exclaimed in surprise, “You’re here just in time to hear the latest news on the case from last night.”

Holmes chuckled. “It’s little coincidence. The doctor was kind enough to provide me with refuge for the night, so I’ve been here since.”

“Come in.” The doctor waved them both into the room proper. “What’s the word?”

Holmes resumed his chair by the fireplace and Mrs. Houghton took the near end of the settee.

“I’ve got good news and bad news,” she explained once she was seated. “Doctor?” she asked with a glance at Holmes. The doctor nodded his assent and she continued, “I’ll get the bad news out of the way first. We haven’t had any luck locating Miss Marston, and from what the men working for Small have said, she was the one organising things. Other than that, they haven’t given us much to go off of, and we’re starting to suspect it’s because they don’t know much more about what was going on. They were just hired for one job.”

“What of the good news?” the doctor asked warily.

“We’ve finally found an interpreter to talk to the girl. Thankfully she knows Hindi, I don’t know what we would have done otherwise. She’s actually from Andaman Island, from one of the indigenous tribes. A couple months ago, the man who was calling himself Jonathan Small arrived in her village with a few other men - we’re still trying to find them.

“They visited a couple of times and seemed particularly interested in talking to children around her age. One night, they broke into her house. She remembers waking up to see them in her room, but they must have knocked her out because she doesn’t remember anything after that until she was on a plane over the ocean. They flew her back to England, dressed her up in a loincloth, handed her a spear, a blow gun, and a bunch of poisoned blow darts, and told her that she had to kill Mr. Duvall or they would kill her. When they didn’t need her, she was kept her in a small cage in their hideout.

“She described what happened with Mr. Duvall, and it’s pretty much what we expected. They had her climb onto the roof and inside through the attic. When she arrived, Mr. Duvall was probably already dead, but they made her shoot him with a blowdart anyway, and help Small in through the window. They finished setting up the scene, had her step in some tar, and left back over the roof.

“When they were done, they locked her up again. Yesterday, before we reached their hideout, they were apparently getting ready to move and she tried to escape. She still had one of the blow darts and stabbed Small with it when he tried to grab her. His accomplices managed to get her back into the cage, where she was when we found her.

“Smith and his son deny knowing anything about her. We’ve got one of Small’s accomplices who corroborates most of it. The other is still keeping quiet, but I think we’ve got enough without him. We’re working to get the girl home as soon as we’ve finished questioning her. She’s pretty shaken up, as you might imagine.”

“It’s horrible,” Dr. Holmes said at last.

Mrs. Houghton nodded in grim agreement. “We’re going to prosecute Small’s accomplices on charges of human trafficking and murder.”

“At least the child will have justice,” Dr. Holmes said, though it seemed to be little consolation.

He was at a loss for words and Mrs. Houghton seemed to be of a similar mind. The doctor had been so preoccupied with defending his own past that he had not even paused to consider those alive who were affected by the culprit’s heinous crimes.

They hardly noticed Holmes, who up until this point had remained an impassive portrait of contemplation, leaning back in the chair, his eyes all but closed, and his hands tented in front of him with his fingertips pressed together. He glanced between the doctor and the Inspector before he broke the silence, “The best we can do now is stop them from doing any more damage. Do you have any other leads?”

“We’ll do what we can to find ‘Mary Marston,’ but the trail’s only getting colder,” Mrs. Houghton said.

“What of Mr. Thaddeus Sholto?” the doctor suggested. “Have you gotten anything out of him?”

“No, he’s sticking to his story about being an out of work actor. I doubt we have enough to prosecute him.”

“We may be forced to wait until they strike again and hope they make a mistake,” Dr. Holmes said, none too happy about it.

“We’ll catch him yet,” Sherlock Holmes insisted with a gleam in his eyes.

“Hopefully before he does too much more damage,” Mrs. Houghton said. “It’s time I get going. I take it I’ll be seeing more of you, Mr. Holmes, Doctor.”

With that, she stood and took her leave. Holmes watched the door close after her with an appraising gaze.

“She seems a promising young officer,” he remarked.

Watson couldn’t tell if he was being genuine or sarcastic and made to reply.

Holmes beat him to it, taking the conversation in an entirely different direction, “What would you think of that? Seeing more of me. I don’t have anything to return to in Moscow and I admit I miss the old detective work. Perhaps I’ll start up a practice in London again, though I don’t mean to be in competition with you. We could even work a few cases together, for old times’ sake.”

Watson smiled at the thought. “You’re always welcome in Baker Street.” He hesitated. “There’s still an extra room if you’d prefer the company of a flatmate. Though, I must admit, I’ve been living as a lone bachelor all these years, I fear I’ve accumulated many habits that aren’t exactly conducive to company.”

Holmes seemed uncertain, fidgeting his long fingers as he rambled, “If you wouldn’t mind it, I confess I’ve had more than my share of solitude, though I could certainly find other arrangements if that would be more amenable to you...”

“No,” Watson interrupted, “Solitude has become distasteful to me as well. I would like nothing more than for you to return to Baker Street.”

“You’re certain? I doubt I’ve become any easier to live with.”

“Absolutely,” Watson said and he held out a hand to Holmes, who, after an instant’s hesitation, eagerly took it.


	4. A Scandal in Bohemia

“The years have not been kind to you,” Holmes remarked. “I find myself relieved that you have not wasted away entirely.”

Holmes and Watson were sitting in their customary chairs by the fireplace. It had been little more than a week since Holmes had, as far as Watson was concerned, miraculously returned from the dead. Watson wrapped up another case he had been working on before Miss Martson arrived on the doorstep to consult him, but no new work had come since - it wasn’t unusual for a week or two to pass without any new clients. So, they had spent the time in Baker Street, reacquainting themselves with one another. That afternoon they had been sitting in silence, Watson reading and Holmes watching him intently.

Watson glanced up and gave Holmes a questioning look.

“You have lost at least seventeen pounds since I last saw you - I am inclined to say more.”

Watson put the book aside. “I have not had the luxury of a wife or housekeeper and have little reason to cook for myself any more than I must.” He gave Holmes a once-over. “I could say the same of you.”

Holmes chuckled. “I suppose you are right. I was thinking I might make dinner tonight. A hearty meal may do us both some good, and then you can say if I still have any merit as a housekeeper.”

Watson’s expression softened in surprise. “Why didn’t you say so? I would be much obliged. I have a faint recollection of a feast of oysters and grouse that turned out magnificently. What do you have in mind for tonight?”

“A little of this, a little of that,” Holmes answered evasively.

Watson laughed. “A surprise, then?”

Holmes said no more, letting his mischievous smile speak for itself and set out for the market. Watson returned to his book, looking forward to that night’s dinner.

Holmes returned shortly, his expression just as enigmatic as ever. In one hand he carried the fruits of his travels and in the other he held a piece of thick, pink-tinted paper that must have come by that day’s post. It was not an ordinary piece of mail; if Watson was not mistaken it was yet another letter from the past.

Holmes put down the bags he was carrying and tossed the paper over to Watson, “Our landlady gave this to me when I returned from my little outing. What do you deduce from it?”

Watson raised his eyebrows at the suggestion. It had been a long time since Holmes had played this game with him. Holmes would press him to come to some hasty conclusions about a person or object, and then would prove nearly all of them to be incorrect. But much had changed since then.

Watson turned to the note. As he read it, his memory filled in the gaps. “There will call upon you to-night, at a quarter to eight o’clock, a gentleman who desires to consult you upon a matter of the very deepest moment. Your recent services to one of the royal houses of Europe have shown that you are one who may safely be trusted with matters which are of an importance which can hardly be exaggerated. This account of you we have from all quarters received. Be in your chamber then at that hour, and do not take it amiss if your visitor wear a mask.”

When he was done, Watson rattled off, “Written by a German on rather expensive paper, from Bohemia, I believe.” Watson held it up to the light to see the monogram “ _ EgPGt _ ” woven into the paper. “Made by Papier Gesellschaft, presumably circa 1888; it’s become brittle with age, but that doesn’t tell us anything new.” He sniffed the paper. “The ink appears to be authentic as well, though it still shimmers, so it must have been penned recently. The handwriting is a forgery; it’s too hesitant even for something copied word for word. I suspect the actual author was left handed, though this was probably written with his right. But I’m sure we’ll meet his Majesty, the King of Bohemia, soon enough, and the late Miss Irene Adler will no doubt shortly follow.”

Holmes had been watching over Watson’s shoulder as he read the note and made his observations. When he finished, Holmes burst into laughter. “Excellent! Though perhaps it was unfair to give you something you’d already seen. Still, your new observations are spot on.”

Watson elected to ignore the hint of condescension in Holmes’s tone, though his answer was not without a bit of a challenge, “Have I missed anything?”

“No” - Holmes shook his head - “there is little else to gain from it.”

Watson glanced at the clock. “I fear you may have to delay your dinner, I doubt ‘his Majesty’ will be long. Even if I call Mrs. Houghton now, it’s unlikely she’d arrive in time.”

“They can both join us,” Holmes suggested with a wry smile.

“Will there be enough for four? Or else, we will just have to wait until the consultation is over and eat late.”

“If you are amenable to it, that may be best, I suspect that’s his car now.”

Watson had stood to pick up the phone and call Scotland Yard, but Holmes’s remark stopped him in his tracks. Sure enough, out the window he could see a sleek black car stopped out front. The driver got out and opened the door for a large, tall man in a deep blue cloak, topped with a broad-brimmed hat. The driver returned to his duties as the opulently dressed passenger made his way to the front door.

They heard a solid knock, the door opened with a creak, and slow, heavy footsteps sounded upon the stairs to pause just outside their door. Another, loud, authoritative tap signaled the man’s arrival.

Holmes gestured for Watson to take it away and so the doctor called, “Come in!”

The door swung open to reveal a giant of a man, who even towered over Holmes by a few inches in height and far surpassed him in muscular girth besides. He wore a costume to behold, dressed as a king of old on his way to a masquerade. His dark blue cloak was lined with bright red silk and secured around his neck with an azure stone. It was open in the front to reveal a formal coat lined in thick fur. He wore high boots topped with yet more fur. He had removed his hat, but his whole face remained covered by a black velvet mask.

The clothes bore the marks of age, but were well preserved - hardly used at all. His boots had been polished recently and only bore the slightest trace of dirt. He had the air of an actor, a man accustomed to taking roles without as second thought no matter how absurd they may be, and the pale smudge of makeup on his glove corroborated it.

“You had my note?” their visitor asked, his voice as deep as he could make it, through the German accent appeared genuine, if perhaps a little over exaggerated. He glanced between the two detectives. “I told you that I would call.”

With Holmes by his side, struggling to stifle laughter himself, it was difficult for Watson not to see the comedy in such a farce. There was little to be gained by sitting through a re-enactment of their old case, but they didn’t have enough evidence to call their visitor out on his act without throwing away any chance at learning more about his employer. Their only opportunity was to allow the case to proceed and see where it would take them in the hopes that the perpetrators would make some fatal mistake.

So, the doctor settled with asking, “You are Wilhelm Gottsreich Sigismond von Ormstein, Grand Duke of Cassel-Felstein?”

The actor gave him a look of outrage and shock. He paced back and forth across the sitting room for good measure. Finally he tore off his mask and threw it to the ground, revealing an almost familiar face, though he could not have been mistaken for the real King of Bohemia. “You are right! I am the King. Why should I attempt to conceal it?”

As soon as that was over with, the doctor continued, “I take it you have come to me because there is a photograph of you with one Miss Irene Adler that you wish for me to steal before she can deliver it to your fiancée.”

The actor nearly jumped in surprise. “I see your powers have not been exaggerated! Your sources are mistaken only upon one count; I know no Irene Adler, the lady in question is an opera singer by the name of Allison Beauregard.”

It was Dr. Holmes’s turn to express surprise, and his was not an act. He had heard Miss Beauregard’s name in the news recently in connection with some scandal about a secret marriage that had gotten out, as such things did.

“Very well,” the doctor said a little reluctantly, “we will find your photograph. However, due to the nature of the task, we will require some payment up front. A small amount will do, just as compensation for the risks involved.”

To his surprise, the actor declared without hesitation, “You have carte blanche! I tell you that I would give one of the provinces of my kingdom to have that photograph.”

He lifted a heavy, leather bag from under his cloak, but the doctor stopped him short, “A check will do” - a sample of the man’s handwriting was much more valuable than his money, and maybe they could trace him through the bank if they were lucky.

“Certainly,” the actor said, “If you come by any other expenses, or require any other payment, but ask and it is yours.”

A check changed hands and Dr. Holmes continued, “Where will you be staying during the investigation?”

“Not far from here, at the Langham hotel under the name of Count Von Kramm.”

“And do you have Miss Beauregard’s address?”

“Of course.” The actor provided it.

“Then, I bid you goodnight, your Majesty. I expect to see you again soon.”

With that, the actor left and Holmes let loose the laughter that had been threatening to break free throughout the interview. “Whomever we are facing has a sense of humor. That, at least, is certain!”

Watson chuckled. “He put on quite the show, and in that costume. Now, you’ll forgive me, but I fear I must delay dinner even further and see where he really goes.” He made to stand.

“Magnificent, Watson, truly magnificent.” Holmes’s eyes seemed to shine with more than just mirth. “You’ve become a detective after my own heart. But I don’t doubt he’ll be expecting something like that, and if you go out as you are you’ll stick out like a sore thumb. I still have a few tricks up my sleeve.” He gave Watson a conspiratorial glance.

His energy was intoxicating, but still Watson hesitated, his pride stinging a little from Holmes’s evaluation. He didn’t want to just sit by the fireplace while Holmes was out investigating  _ his _ case. But then again… “You’re right,” Watson admitted at last, “I never quite got the hang of all your disguises, and I never was much of an actor.”

“Right you are, Watson.”

Watson shot him a glare.

Holmes stood and gave Watson a friendly pat on the shoulder as he made his way to the door. “Just leave the legwork to me, my dear fellow, so you can focus on the all-important mental front.”

Reluctantly, Watson watched his old friend go. He shouldn’t have expected anything less from Holmes - he was the real detective, after all. He only hoped Holmes didn’t resolve the case without him. But it was good to have an extra pair of legs, especially as Holmes knew very well what he was doing, and it ought have been easier to focus on the case without Holmes watching over his shoulder.

Watson leaned back in his chair with a sigh and tried to think about the problem in front of him. He could have sworn the “King of Bohemia” looked familiar behind that mask and beneath all of his finery. It was just a vague impression, but it bothered incessantly at the back of his mind. If he could just take away the once stylish moustache and combed dark hair, there was something in those features that he had seen before.

He pulled out the check and stared blindly at it. The handwriting was forged, no doubt, just like all of the evidence brought to him by Miss Marston. If only he hadn’t been in such a hurry to get the interview over with, he might have had a chance to take a good look at the man.

Suddenly it struck him; the King of Bohemia had been so different, confident and regal, compared to the nervous Mr. Sholto, he must have even used makeup to alter his features, but he would bet the two men were one in the same. They were both forgers, and there was something in their features that even judicious use of makeup would be hard pressed to conceal.

The doctor bolted out of his chair to rummage through his papers, never as organized as they ought to be, in search of the photographs of the letters Miss Martson had received - Mrs. Houghton claimed the originals as evidence. Finally, he landed on them and fell back into his chair to compare the check and the letter announcing his majesty’s arrival side by side with the one from Mr. Sholto. It was hard to be certain; the man was a forger after all, and neither writing was his own, but the doctor was ready to bet they had been wrought by the same measured hand.

He was still glancing between the two samples, basking in his increasingly certain victory, when Holmes returned, dressed in the tattered costume of an old beggar - the same that had been lingering outside of Baker Street a little over a week ago. Holmes vanished into his room to change without a word, and when he emerged, his usual well-groomed self in a sharp suit, he hurried to the kitchen to prepare a belated dinner.

Holmes talked as he worked; “Our man seems to be honest on one count, at least; he is staying at the Langham as he said, under the name of a Count.”

Watson stood in the doorway, watching and keeping out of the way. “Meanwhile, I believe I have found a clue as to his real identity, though only a handwriting expert could say for certain.”

Holmes waved off the suggestion, a large knife in hand. Suddenly realizing his mistake, he hastily returned to chopping.

“I suppose you didn’t get a chance to meet Mr. Sholto. What do you make of the King od Bohemia?” Watson asked.

“There is little to say at the moment, other than the fact that he is clearly quite the actor to have kept a straight face under all of that finery,” Holmes said with a wry smile.

Watson chuckled. “I do not envy him. He must have been burning up in there.”

Holmes took a moment to focus on preparing their dinner before speaking again, “Perhaps we would do well with a division of labour. I can follow up on Miss Beauregard while you pursue his Majesty.”

“Are you certain? I doubt she’s involved; she’s really an opera singer, a rather famous one.”

“We will see,” Holmes said and would say no more upon the matter. Watson could only guess at what the detective was thinking. 

* * *

Holmes was out by the time Watson awoke the next morning and did not return all afternoon. The doctor took the opportunity to get out of the flat and caught a train to the New Scotland Yard on the bank of the Thames.

The receptionist greeted him with a smile. “Good afternoon, Dr. Holmes. Are you here to see D.I. Houghton?”

“Good afternoon” - he doffed his hat at her. “Yes, she should be expecting me.”

The receptionist laughed. “You know where to go,” she said, before returning to her work.

“Thank you.”

Dr. Holmes made his way down the hall, to Mrs. Houghton’s office. He gave a single loud knock on the door and she called for him to enter.

“I’m surprised your friend didn’t come along,” she said as he took a seat on the other side of her desk. “What can I do for you?”

“He’s doing his own investigation.” Dr. Holmes passed her the note and the check. “As I mentioned on the phone, another client has come to me with a mystery that, to my knowledge, had already been solved.”

“You said he claimed to be the King of Bohemia?”

Dr. Holmes nodded. “I believe it is now part of the Czech Republic. I doubt you’ll find the case in your police records; it was a purely unofficial matter. As the story goes, the King of Bohemia hired a well-known private detective to steal a photograph from a famous opera singer. The reasons would seem a little laughable to you now, but that’s exactly what I’ve been asked to do. The opera singer in question is Miss Alison Bureguard, and I have reason to believe the king is none other than the out of luck actor who played Mr. Thaddeus Sholto.”

“You’re sure? That’s a pretty reckless move.”

“He was very thoroughly disguised. I’m not absolutely certain as to his identity, but your handwriting analysts should be able to prove it. I saw him write that check, and I think the note is the same. It also explains why you were unable to find any matches for Mr. Sholto’s fingerprints in your record. With all of his nervous chatter I didn’t notice an accent, but the King of Bohemia’s could only have been a real german. I expect you’ll have more luck identifying his fingerprints in their records than ours.”

“I’ll send in a request right away. If nothing else we may be able to catch him for check fraud. Do you think Alison Beauregard is in any danger?”

Dr. Holmes hesitated. “I don’t think so, not of anything worse than attempted robbery, anyway, and only of a portrait, if that.”

“Sounds like a bit of a departure from form. Maybe they’re cutting their losses after what happened last time.”

“The original case was a little unusual, but it was noteworthy in its own right. They’ve been very loyal to their theme so far, and I expect this will be no different.”

“Still, if you think you’ll need backup, just give us a call. In the meantime, I’ll try to get back to you as soon as I can about those fingerprints.”

“Thank you.”

Dr. Holmes counted that as a success and left to wander the neighborhood with the vague intention of meandering back home. He weaved between groups of tourists and ducked around photo shoots, deep in thought. Even if he had the purported King of Bohemia’s true identity, it didn’t bring him any closer to bringing down the whole operation. He needed to do something to draw their man out. Perhaps if he played along and pretended to investigate Miss Beauregard, he could find  _ something _ more solid.

With that in mind, he made his way back to Baker Street. He was not surprised to find that Holmes was still out when he returned, though the afternoon had nearly passed. The doctor would call upon Miss Beauregard the next day. In the meantime, he would see what information he could find on her. Perhaps he could even help Holmes out with his investigation. He smiled to himself at the thought as he made the first call.

* * *

Dr. Watson did not see Sherlock Holmes again until the next morning. Holmes was already more than half done with his breakfast when Watson joined him at the table.

Holmes greeted Watson with a smile, and a cheery, “Good morning,” but he had clearly slept little, if at all.

“Good morning,” Watson answered in kind as he piled food into his plate. “I didn’t hear you come in last night.”

“No, you wouldn’t have. I only got back a couple hours ago and I won’t be able to stay long.”

“I’m afraid you’ve gotten the short shrift of the investigation,” Watson said. “I had some time to spare, so I looked into Miss Beauregard on my own, and everything about her lines up. She’s from America, her career is well documented, and now she’s part of a troupe in London. I’ve found no cause for suspicion.”

“Really?” Holmes said in pointedly exaggerated surprise.

Watson frowned back at him. “Have you found anything?”

“You know me, my dear fellow; I make progress in my own way.”

Their conversation was cut short by the ringing of the telephone. With Holmes’s silent permission, Watson stood to answer it.

“Hello?”

“Dr. Holmes?” Mrs. Houghton confirmed on the other end.

“Yes,” the doctor said.

“You were right about Sholto. I heard back from the Germans today - very prompt of course. He’s a well known con artist there by the name of Gregor Falk. They’ve been trying to get their hands on him for years, but they’ve had trouble getting anything to stick. Apparently he’s been unusually quiet lately, now we know why.”

“Good.”

“Do you want us to bring him in?”

He shook his head, though he knew she couldn’t see. “If we take him now, we’ll no doubt lose his accomplices. Perhaps if we can get more solid evidence against him, we may be in a better position to bargain for the truth.”

“You know where to call if you need backup.”

“Thank you,” the doctor said, before hanging up the phone and returning to the table.

“So you’ve finally identified Mr. Falk?’” Holmes said with a hint of bemused impatience.

“You knew?” Watson exclaimed. “How?”

“I have my ways.”

Holmes’s smugly enigmatic expression grated badly on Watson’s already agitated nerves. “You know, you could have spared me some time and told me, instead of waiting for me to discover it myself!”

“I wouldn’t want to interfere,” Holmes answered with mock humility.

“You are aware that you’re not the only one investigating this case!” Watson retorted. ‘A division of labor’ - pah! He could plainly see that Holmes was just carrying out his own investigation on the assumption that Watson’s wouldn’t bear any fruit.

“Of course,” Holmes said as though he had done nothing wrong. “You have your methods and I have mine.” His words held an edge of competition; whoever succeeded would prove their methods to be superior.

That was not what Watson had in mind, but if that was the way Holmes wanted it, then so be it. Some old vein of stubbornness made him loath to back down from the challenge.

Soon after, they went their separate ways; Holmes to who knows where and Watson to the home of Miss Beauregard. He considered using Holmes’s old method for finding the photograph, but he was no actor and these were different circumstances. Miss Beauregard was probably innocent. He didn’t even know if she had a photograph to speak of.

The address that Mr. Falk had given him - as confirmed by the doctor’s further research - was occupied by a handsome home, not very large, but well kept. Fortunately, the mistress of the house was in when Dr. Holmes arrived. He knocked at the door and she answered, wearing a casual spring dress that was a strikingly recent fashion.

“Hello,” she said with a strong American accent, “If you’re here for an autograph, you’ll have to wait for the show tonight.”

“Good afternoon. I’m not here for an autograph. I just have a few questions for you.”

“Really?” she asked, suddenly guarded. “What do you want? Are you a reporter?”

“My name is Dr. Jonathan Holmes. I’m a detective; I work with the police on occasion and investigate other private matters. I have reason to believe that you’ve been targeted by a con artist.”

Her suspicion turned to confusion. “What? No one’s scamming me!”

“Have you encountered anyone unusual -”

“You mean like you?”

Dr. Holmes couldn’t deny it was a good point, but clarified, “No, has anyone been loitering near your house, or have you gotten any unusual visitors?”

“I don’t think so, just the usual fans and journalists - and the people from the tabloids.”

Dr. Holmes shook his head. As a famous opera singer, it would be very easy for someone to disguise themselves as a reporter and keep an eye on her without drawing any attention at all. He tried a more direct approach; “We suspect someone in particular, a German con artist. He would probably come in disguise, but I have his picture here” - he handed her a photograph of Mr. Sholto.

She looked at it for a moment before finally shaking her head. “No, I don’t recognize him. Why would he come after me?”

“You could say we’ve been tipped off. Nothing unusual has happened to you recently?”

She hesitated. “Well… I did suspect a break in while I was performing one night a week or two ago, but nothing was stolen, I just found the door unlocked and a window open. I already have someone looking into it.”

Clearly Holmes was already on the case, but the doctor had to focus on his own investigation and this was a lead if he’d ever seen one. “You said nothing was taken, did you notice if anything was left behind?”

“I- I don’t think so. Why would a thief break in to give me something?”

His impatience grew as he hit yet another dead end, but he knew he was on the right track. “What about the walls? Did you notice anything different about them? A crack that wasn’t there before?”

“What are you talking about?” she asked with some impatience.

“If I am correct, I should be able to show you. May I step inside for a moment? I assure you that I won’t touch anything. I suspect I know what the man who broke into your home did.”

She gave him a long look. “If you try anything I won’t hesitate to call the police. And then we can find out if you really do work with them.”

He nodded in assent.

She led him inside and kept a close eye on him as he scanned the walls. Finally, he found what he was looking for - a small thin gash in the wall that looked like the board could be slid open.

“If I am not mistaken,” he said, pointing to the mark on the wall, “they created a recess in your wall. There’s even some sawdust on the floor.”

“What? How?” She glanced at the wall and the floor below it, and her eyes widened in surprise.

“Do you want me to open it, or would you rather do the honors?”

“I’ll do it.” She stepped up to the wall and used all of her strength to pry the board loose. It slid aside with a final heave to reveal an ornate box that had been placed within the wall. Miss Beauregard opened the box and took out a tall photograph.

“You’ve got to be kidding me!”

She showed him the picture. It clearly depicted Miss Beauregard standing arm in arm with Mr. Falk dressed as the King of Bohemia in his full royal regalia. Behind them was a beautiful formal garden.

“Do you recognize the man in the photograph?” Dr. Holmes asked.

She shook her head. “I’ve never acted with him in my life. It must be photoshopped.”

Dr. Holmes was inclined to agree, though he would have to ask an expert on the matter. “For now, I think it may be best to leave this photograph where we found it, and I would prefer if you didn’t tell anyone about my visit unless you’re speaking with the police, as I would rather my actions not get back to the man who placed it in your house to begin with. Meanwhile, we’ll do what we can to catch him.”

She nodded in assent.

“You’ll be returning to America soon?”

“Yes, I’ll be leaving for my honeymoon tomorrow.”

“The police will probably want to speak with you upon your return, but I expect everything will be resolved by then. In the meantime, I congratulate you on your marriage and thank you for your cooperation,” Dr. Holmes said and left with a smile.

Before returning to Baker Street, he dropped by the Scotland Yard.

“Dr. Holmes,” Mrs. Houghton greeted him as he stepped into her office for the second time in as many days, “make yourself at home”

“I’ve just paid a visit to Miss Beauregard,” he explained. “The lady and I were able to conclude that someone broke into her house last week to conceal a painting in a recess in her wall, and I have good reason to believe that our man will break in again after she leaves on her honeymoon tomorrow to replace the photograph with a letter. If we want to catch him red-handed, I believe that is our chance.”

“We can keep an eye on her house and make sure that no one breaks in.”

“Thank you very much, I have a feeling I will see you tomorrow.”

From there, Dr. Holmes returned home and called it a night. He was fumbling with his keys at the door to the flat when he heard a familiar voice call out to him - “Good night, Doctor Holmes.”

He glanced around, but his best guess was that he had been addressed by a young man who was already hurrying away.

* * *

Dr. Holmes was just finishing lunch the next day when he received a call from Mrs. Houghton.

“You may want to come down to Allison Beauregard’s house,” she said. “Someone tried to break in right after she left for the airport this morning, we’ve got him in custody now.”

It was a shame Holmes would miss the denouncement - he hadn’t a clue where the detective had gotten off to now - but the doctor doubted this would be the end of the investigation.

The doctor arrived at Miss Beauregard’s house to find a swarm of police cars gathered in the street. Passers by and journalists craned around them, searching for a glimpse of what had occurred within. Dr. Holmes greeted one of the officers watching the periphery and stepped inside to the protest of many envious bystanders.

He found Mrs. Houghton standing next to one of the police cars, looking down at her phone. She glanced up in surprise at his arrival. “Dr. Holmes, there you are! He hasn’t said anything yet, just that he was hired by Ms. Beauregard to do some repairs while she was gone - we called her and she denied it. Do you want to try questioning him? He’s locked up in the car. He’s been pretty calm, but those are usually the ones waiting for a chance to escape.”

“I can certainly try,” Dr. Holmes said.

Mrs. Houghton motioned for him to step aside and opened the car door. “Come on, this man is going to ask you a few questions.”

Dr. Holmes heard a grunt in reply.

Mrs. Houghton helped a middle aged man out of the car. His back was prematurely bent from years of physical labor, but he must have been very tall at full height. He was thin and wiry, but held himself so he looked broader than he was. His face was covered in a shaggy brown moustache and beard that matched the thinning hair on his head.

“What do you want?” the man grunted.

The doctor had to do a few double takes to make sure he knew what he was seeing.

When he was absolutely positive he could not be mistaken, he finally blurted out, “Holmes, what are you doing here?”

Mrs. Houghton gave him a puzzled look. The doctor’s eyes met the prisoner’s striking gray ones that peered back at him with a humorous gleam and the illusion was broken. The man stood up straight and relaxed his shoulders so that he no longer looked so inflated.

“I suppose the game is up,” he said with a laugh in his own voice.

“Take off that ridiculous disguise,” the doctor insisted, though he was having difficulty holding back laughter of his own.

“What? You don’t like it?” Holmes wiggled the fake moustache.

That was too much for Watson, who burst into laughter and Holmes followed suit.

“Wait, what’s going on?” Mrs. Houghton demanded, pulling the pair back down to earth, “Why was Mr. Holmes trying to break into Beauregard’s house?”

“That’s a good question,” the doctor said with nary a chuckle as he rounded on Holmes.

Holmes seemed to debate the matter internally before, with a glance at the increasingly impatient doctor, he finally resigned himself to answering, “Until I was caught by these overzealous bunglers, I was undercover. Now that Mr. Falk has been given ample warning to escape, I suppose there is no further harm to be done in revealing my now defunct plan. When I followed Mr. Falk back to his hotel, I posed as a fellow con artist and proposed a partnership between us in an attempt to eventually earn his and his employer’s trust. I had to prove myself somehow and he needed someone to break into Ms. Beauregard’s home and plant the next piece of evidence. It was an easy in - or it would have been.”

The doctor, meanwhile felt a growing sense of indignation. At last, when it seemed Holmes was done, he snapped, “This trap was mine, not the work of some ‘overzealous’ official, and I have as much a right to say you bungled my plan as to say I ruined yours! If you had not offered your services to Mr. Falk, he may have come himself or at least sent someone who already knew something about him and could serve as a witness. What information do  _ you _ have?”

Holmes frowned. “As my infiltration was cut short, all I have gleaned so far is that he was hired to perform for us - but not by whom - and had offered his services to Miss Beauregard as a private eye to make a little extra money from the gig.”

The doctor could not help but exclaim, “None of this would have happened if you had bothered to tell me your plan or pursued Miss Beauregard as  _ you _ suggested!”

“And throw away my cover?” Holmes retorted.

“You think I couldn’t have kept it secret?”

“It wasn’t worth the risk.”

“Was it?” Watson charged, “You saw how that turned out!”

Holmes looked down at him, his proud stare a challenge. Oh how Watson wished he was taller so he could loom over the detective for once, maybe then his point would get through Holmes’s thick skull.

At last Watson said, “I think it would be best if I handled my cases alone from now on.”

Holmes’s proud expression cracked. His gaze turned reproachful, but Watson stood firm.

At last, Holmes relented, “I’m sorry, my dear old friend, I’m afraid I got carried away with the thrill of the hunt after so long. Perhaps you are right, we’ve both become too proud.”

Mrs. Houghton, who had remained silent throughout their dispute, now spoke up, “We may be able to salvage the case if you’re willing to serve as a witness, tying Mr. Falk to the crime.”

“You can try,” Holmes said, “but he’s certainly vanished by now.”

“You’re not a flight risk at any rate,” she said with a glance at the doctor, “so you’re free to go unless we come by with an arrest warrant, but I wouldn’t worry too much about it. I’ll call if I have news about Mr. Falk.”

She removed Holmes’s handcuffs and wished him and the doctor luck as they returned to Baker Street.

Holmes and Watson caught a cab and spent the ride in tense silence. Watson could not help but dwell on the case. Between the two of them, it had all been a waste. They were no closer to catching the impostor, Miss Marston, or the man behind these twisted recreations.

It was then that he recognized the voice he had heard the previous evening upon his return to Baker Street. She had been right there and he hadn’t even realized until it was much too late. He had let her escape once more and for that he only had himself to blame.


	5. The Valley of Fear

In the weeks that followed the debacle of the second  _ Scandal in Bohemia _ , Sherlock Holmes and Dr. John Watson came to a somewhat uncomfortable truce. They spoke amicably about anything other than the case at hand or any other that Watson may have been investigating, the topic of which was avoided at all costs. The doctor was left to pursue his practice alone with no input whatsoever from Holmes, who instead dedicated himself to housekeeping and music, which left him restless and frequently irritable.

It was early in the afternoon, nearly a month later. Watson was sifting through that day’s mail while Holmes watched from where he lay, strewn across his own chair in a fit of boredom that threatened for the worse. Amidst all the bills and advertisements, Watson came upon an old fashioned envelope. It was nothing special, at least it wouldn’t have been in 1887, but now it could not have been mistaken for an ordinary letter. Even the feel and weight of the paper were different.

Watson tore the envelope open to reveal a page of thick well worn paper bearing a familiar cipher. Holmes craned over to get a glimpse of the seemingly random string of numbers - and one letter - intercut with three words; “Douglas” followed by a repetition of “Birlstone.”

“What do you make of it?” Holmes asked, unable and unwilling to hold his peace any longer.

Watson put down the letter and gave him a reproachful look.

“Look at me, Watson, I’m wasting away. My mind begs to be used!”

Watson let out a sigh. He could feel this was not going to go his way. Still, he tried, “We can’t risk letting him get away again. Another man is dead, and the longer it takes to catch the culprit, the more victims will follow.”

“I can help,” Holmes insisted. “You know I am equal to it. For me to stay here and stagnate would be unfair to the both of us - in Moscow or London it’s the same. This is no life for me, my dear Watson, please understand.”

Watson heard the ultimatum as though it had been spoken aloud; if he did not allow Holmes to work with him, he would leave and that would be that. It stung badly to hear it aloud, even though Holmes had said it with a little more delicacy.

Watson had no choice, he could not bear to see him go, and Holmes knew it. There was no one else in the world who knew who he really was, who shared in his past. That alone may have settled it, but this was not just anyone; this was Sherlock Holmes, the dearest friend he had ever known, returned from the dead. No, he could not let Holmes vanish again.

Still, he reluctantly handed the letter over to the waiting detective.

Holmes glanced at it for a moment before rattling off, “Antique paper” - he sniffed it - “ink too, but still fresh. He was careful not to leave any prints, clearly a forgery - look at those horrible Greek e’s. It’s a standard book cipher, based on an old almanac, if I recall.” He turned back to the doctor and offered, his tone just shy of condescending, “So, what course of action do you suggest?”

After a moment’s consideration, Watson said, “We ought to solve the cipher to be sure - I think an old edition of Whitaker's almanac should do the trick, but we’ll have to go to the library for that. In the meantime, did you see anything in the morning paper?”

“Very reasonable,” Holmes declared, his energy returned with a vengeance. “I haven’t had a chance to look at the paper yet, but that can be remedied quickly enough.”

Watson stood as Holmes reached for the morning’s news. “Mrs. Houghton may know more than the press, especially if the case has already made it to London.”

“Don’t count our intrepid reporters out just yet. And there are advantages to working independently from the official force.”

“There are advantages to working with them too,” Watson said before picking up the phone, cutting one conversation short with another.

“Dr. Holmes, I was just meaning to call you!” Mrs. Houghton exclaimed on the other end of the line. “There’s been another one, out in Sussex this time.”

“I’ve just received a warning about it. I take it Mr. John Douglas was found dead in Birlstone Manor?”

“I don’t think the place is called Birlstone, but you’re right about the victim. I got a call this morning from the country Inspector. Apparently Douglas was shot around eleven last night. According to Inspector Mason, it looks like someone planted evidence of an intruder, but the current theory is that it was someone inside the house. The whole place is set up like the others were, all Victorian, which is why I was called in and I thought you might want to come along.”

“There’s not a minute to waste.”

“I can drive you, I’ll be over in a few.”

They both hung up and Watson turned back to Holmes, who was still flipping through the paper.

Holmes put the paper aside as Watson returned to his chair. “It seems Douglas’s murder was not quite in time to make the morning press. Tomorrow, I’m certain there will be a full feature on the matter.”

“I’m sure,” Watson said, his smile a little smug with his victory.

They were interrupted by a knock at the door.

Holmes and Watson exchanged a glance, but neither was expecting anyone - it was impossible for Mrs. Houghton to have arrived so quickly. Finally, Holmes gestured for Watson to go ahead.

So, the doctor shouted, “Come in.”

The door swung open and banged against the wall.

“A letter for Dr. Holmes!” a small boy proclaimed from the doorway.

He couldn’t have been older than twelve, dressed like a page boy not dissimilar from the one Holmes once had. But his oily hair and rough skin suggested he was a homeless child who had been paid to play the role.

“I am he,” the doctor said and held out his hand for the letter.

The boy handed it to him and the doctor gave him a tip.

“There's more where that came from if you can tell me who put you up to this.”

The boy laughed and shook his head.

“How much did he offer you? I'll double it,” the doctor insisted.

“He said he'd double your offer if I didn’t say anything.”

“And how will he know what you did or didn't say here?”

The boy thought about it for a moment. “He said his name’s Fred Porlock.”

“And where did you meet him?”

“Camberwell, in front of the post office.”

“Could you describe him for me? And then you can go on your way.”

“He was wearing a big yellow jacket. He’s tall and old, with gray hair and a silly moustache that he kept twitching.” 

Dr. Holmes nodded in thought. The moustache must have been fake, his hair could have easily been dyed, and it wasn’t so difficult for an experienced actor to play a man taller or shorter than himself. There wasn’t much he could glean from the description, but at least the boy had seen his face, if he could find him again.

“Did he say anything else?” Dr. Holmes attempted.

The boy shook his head. “Just to bring you the letter as fast as I could. He seemed pretty nervous about it, kept glancing over his shoulder like someone was following him. Are you spies?”

“No,” Dr. Holmes said, though he couldn’t help but smile a little at the suggestion. He handed the boy a sizable payment. “Where could I find you if I had more questions?”

“I’m usually in Camberwell,” the boy said, already running out the door.

If he hurried, Dr. Holmes could probably follow the boy on his next errand, perhaps catch a glimpse of the so-called Mr. Porlock for himself, but the chances of success were low compared to the risk of delaying their journey to the countryside.

“I doubt it would come to anything,” Holmes said, startling Watson out of his reverie. “We would do better to search for answers in Sussex than London.”

“How on Earth do you do that?” Watson exclaimed, caught entirely off guard.

“I’m relieved to find I can still surprise you on occasion.”

“Yes, I fear I’ve become entirely unaccustomed to your tricks.”

“I’m surprised you haven’t mastered it. It’s rather superficial.”

“I suppose I occasionally give Mrs. Houghton a bit of a shock, but I never intend to.”

“You’re much too modest, my dear Watson.”

“Am I?” Watson asked pointedly.

Holmes let out a barking laugh. “A distinct touch, Watson, a distinct touch.”

Watson smiled with his victory as he tore open the envelope the boy had delivered. Inside was a short note from one Mr. Fred Porlock announcing his resignation as turncoat. It had been hastily written, but holding the note and the cipher side by side Watson could see that they had the same distinctive features, forged and genuine.

“It’s a shame,” Holmes remarked, greatly subdued. “Porlock was the first man to turn informant on Professor Moriarty despite the grave risk. He didn’t have the courage for it in the end, but I shall always remember him for having taken the first step. And here he has been reduced to yet another agent playing his role.”

“Perhaps it’s not all in vain,” Watson suggested. “There may be some record of his presence at the Camberwell post office by which we can trace him, and that boy could serve as a witness - if we can find him again.”

Holmes just shook his head. “I fear our Mr. Porlock is long gone.”

As loathe as Watson was to admit it, Holmes was probably right.

They both sat ruminating in silence for a little longer until Mrs. Houghton arrived en route to Sussex.

“This may be our chance,” Mrs. Houghton declared as she waited in the doorway for Dr. Holmes to gather his things. “We’re pretty certain it must have been someone in the house - it doesn’t look like anyone escaped - and they’re all clearly in on it. Really, I don’t know what they were thinking, setting it up like this.”

“I’m afraid they very well know what they’re doing. I doubt the man behind these crimes is among the suspects, but perhaps he has made a mistake that will lead us to him. After all, no chain is stronger than its weakest link, we just need to apply the necessary pressure. Shall we?” The doctor gestured toward the door.

“Mr. Holmes, will you be joining us?” Mrs. Houghton asked with a glance at the doctor.

“I would love to,” Holmes answered with exaggerated politesse, “but I fear the decision is our dear doctor’s to make.”

The doctor gave a reluctant nod and they all made their way out onto the street.

* * *

It was nearing evening by the time the three detectives arrived at the old manor that served as the stage for the latest crime. They wound up a long driveway lined in old beech trees and parked in front of a large vegetable patch that encircled the house in place of an outer moat. Beyond that was the inner moat, still full of muddy water, surrounding the grand old manor house. As Mrs. Houghton had explained during the drive, the drawbridge that lay open across the moat was the only way into or out of the house, and it was raised at night.

A stout middle-aged man in plain clothes greeted them as they stepped out of the car. “Inspector Houghton,” he called out, “There you are! Inspector Gregson said you had gone into the city to find a specialist.” He gave both of the amateurs an appraising glance with a measure of disapproval. “We still haven’t found anyone tromping around in muddy trousers. At least one of them is lying, and the whole lot of them are pretty suspicious if you ask me.”

Mrs. Houghton nodded along as he spoke. Then she waved the amateurs forward - “Inspector Mason, this is Dr. Jonathan Holmes, and his friend, Sherlock Holmes. Dr. Holmes has been working with me on the case from the start and should be able to help us get to the bottom of it.”

“A pleasure to meet you,” the doctor said with a tip of his hat.

Holmes, in turn, stepped forward to greet the inspector with an outstretched hand, which the Inspector hesitantly shook. “Pleased to make your acquaintance. I don’t suppose you’re related to the late Inspector White Mason? I am quite familiar with his remarkable work in the Birlstone Manor case, but I didn’t know a penchant for detective work ran in the family.”

“My father was an officer and his father before him,” Inspector Mason explained with equal parts surprise and pride. “It’s good to hear that at least some word of my family’s work has gotten around.”

“The case your ancestor pursued was a very noteworthy one, not the least so in its parallels to the matter at hand. I believe you are quite right, and we intend to find out what’s going on.”

The doctor stepped in - “Shall we go in and see for ourselves?”

Inspector Mason startled and stared at the doctor as though he did not know what to make of him.

Holmes laughed. “Very well, we should not keep our dear doctor waiting.”

Watson was, to his credit, not disarmed by Holmes's smile as he passed, leaving the doctor and Mrs. Houghton to follow after. They exchanged a glance, but the doctor found little sympathy; Mrs. Houghton was on the verge of laughter herself.

Inspector Mason led them over the drawbridge and into the manor. The entire house was an antique, from the architecture, to the walls, to the furniture. It had not even been wired with electricity as the Baker Street flat had been. The various trappings lying about that should have given some insight into daily life in the manor looked to be as old as the house and could have once belonged to a country gentleman, but there was little evidence they had been used in the last century.

At the door they were greeted by a butler who, at first glance, looked as prim and proper as any. However, upon closer inspection, his clothes were not quite the right fit and he was more muscular than any butler the doctor had ever met. And then there was the tell-tale sign of a concealed weapon at his hip.

“What can I do for you” - the butler hesitated and what remained of his air of prim composure disintegrated into discomfort - “gentlemen?”

Holmes deferred to Watson with a glance, and so the doctor answered, “The scene itself first, if you will. And then we will need somewhere to interview everyone.”

The butler assented and led them a short way into the study. By the time they arrived, he and Holmes were in the midst of an avid conversation about football, of all things. They lingered at the door while the doctor followed Mrs. Houghton inside. Inspector Mason went off to attend to his own business.

The room had been emptied of its grizzly inhabitant, though some of the blood remained to emphasize the tape outline that marked where it had been. The familiar clues were there; the muddy footprints by the window, the bloody track on the sill, and the lone dumbbell sitting in the corner. The sawed off shotgun had no doubt been taken to ballistics already, assuming it had been present at all.

“Forensics finished up here a while ago,” Mrs. Houghton explained. “They've taken everything back to the lab to be analyzed, we'll get the report in a few days. If you want, I can show you all of their photographs of how everything was when they arrived. They removed the corpse, obviously, and a shotgun which we're taking to be the murder weapon unless they tell us otherwise.”

Dr. Holmes nodded. “Do those footprints match any shoes in the house?”

“The one on the sill was clearly made by one of Cecil Barker’s slippers, it was obviously faked. Someone dipped the slipper in blood and pressed it there, but we're still trying to figure out who. We haven't found the boots that made the muddy prints on the floor.”

“This is truly a marvelous piece of work,” Holmes remarked, having joined them at last. His eyes shone with enthusiasm. “It's a shame your people have mucked about the scene so thoroughly, you haven't left us much to work with.”

He examined the scene, his eyes flitting this way and that, performing calculations the doctor could not even begin to fathom, as familiar as he was with the detective's methods.

“We haven't been ‘mucking about,’” Mrs. Houghton replied, with only a touch of humor to soften her otherwise sharp tone. “The forensic scientists have done their job and now we're doing ours.”

“Things have changed a lot,” the doctor attempted to explain, “The police have picked up a lot of your old methods and they’ve got the resources to more than do them justice. There's even new technology-”

Holmes cut him off with a wave, “No matter, there's enough left to draw a few conclusions.” He rounded on the doctor with an impish smile, “You have your methods, what do you observe?”

The doctor frowned. Though Holmes’s prompting questions had helped him begin to learn to imitate Holmes's deduction, now the detective's tone grated. Would he always have to prove himself - and then not even be Holmes's equal.

Still, the doctor had his pride. He examined the ground until he had gleaned enough to say, “These tracks are clear thanks to the rain a few days ago. I believe they include some of the dark mud we passed by the station in town, perhaps he arrived by train. They go straight from the door to those distinctive marks behind the curtains. Then, after some time, he stepped out and there was some sort of scuffle” - he followed the footprints around the room as he narrated - “And they end here by the body.”

“Excellent!” Holmes exclaimed, and for an instant Watson glowed with pride. “Though, of course, we both knew all that before we so much as entered the room. What do you  _ see _ ?”

The doctor’s smile quickly went flat. Two could play at this game - “What do  _ you _ see?”

“Aside from the drops of blood on the floor made by the slipper as it was being carried to the window to make that print, a candle that is only barely burned - suggesting that there was only a brief interview between the victim and the perpetrator - and of course the missing dumbbell?” Holmes answered with a smirk and turned to Mrs. Houghton - “I take it your forensic scientists removed the card bearing the initials 'V. V.’ and the number, ‘341?’”

She nearly jumped in surprise, but quickly regained her bearings. “Yes, of course, it's in for handwriting and materials analysis. I think they're also sweeping it for fingerprints.”

“It must have been laid down after the crime was committed - see how the blood is smeared here” - Holmes pointed at a roughly rectangular spot on the ground that fit the description. “Shall I go on, or do you want another crack at it?” he challenged the doctor.

The doctor considered the facts and his surroundings for a moment before he responded, “That the candle was only briefly lit reveals little. It could have been lit any time today or even in the past week, especially if someone in the house was involved in setting up the scene. People nowadays use torches or even cell phones to the same effect. The lamp wasn’t even used, suggesting that for anything longer than a few minutes he must have had a different source of light that’s no longer in the room.” He turned to Mrs. Houghton and asked, “Was there anything here earlier?”

She shook her head.

Holmes stepped over to the candle and examined it. “It’s new and can’t have been lit more than a few days ago,” he pronounced.

Dr. Holmes frowned. “That still doesn't mean-”

He was interrupted by a pair of sharp knocks at the door. Without waiting for an answer, the door swung open and banged against the wall to make way for a rather excited young man who must have been none other than Mr. Cecil Barker, the friend of the Douglas’s who happened to be staying with them at the time of their misfortune. He was breathing hard as though he had just returned from a long dash and his pants legs were splashed with mud that could have easily come from the road leading up to the house. He glanced between the detectives gathered in the room.

“Just in time,” Holmes remarked.

“Sorry to interrupt,” Mr. Barker said, paying Holmes no heed. “I have news!”

Mrs. Houghton stepped forward. “What is it?”

“We- they’ve found a bicycle, his bicycle! He left it behind, not far from the house!”

“We may as well have a look then, shall we?” Holmes declared as though the matter was decided.

The doctor, however, turned to Mrs. Houghton, “Would it be possible for you or Inspector Mason to look into the bicycle, perhaps determine its origin? I would rather get a start on interviewing the witnesses, if it is all the same.” He shot a pointed glance at Holmes.

Mrs. Houghton followed his gaze. “You’re sure you’ll be alright?”

“There is no cause for concern,” Holmes answered. “We’re quite accustomed to working together.”

“At least, we once were,” the doctor could not help but add.

Watson regretted it as soon as the words left his lips and for an instant he saw a look of deep hurt cross Holmes's face, but it was gone as soon as it had come, replaced by a smile he may have only fancied was a little forced.

“Don’t worry,” Holmes insisted in his easy way, “we’ll manage.”

“If you're sure…” Mrs. Houghton said and allowed Mr. Barker to lead her out of the room.

And so, Holmes and Watson were left alone. Watson was about to apologize, but Holmes spoke first.

“What now?” he asked, watching Watson with steely gray eyes and a sharp, critical air.

Watson hesitated, suddenly uncertain, “Well, I was thinking of interviewing the witnesses first…”

“Yes, you said as much. Who first? You seemed to have a plan.”

Watson glared at him, but he didn't really have much more of an answer. The doctor had just planned on hearing the witnesses’ stories and going from there. Was it not Holmes who had always cautioned against theorizing too much before the facts of the case were known? Watson elected not to dignify Holmes with a response and instead led the way out of the study and called for the butler.

The butler promptly arrived and greeted Holmes with a smile.

He seemed ready to resume their conversation about football when the doctor interrupted in his closest imitation of Holmes’s exaggerated politeness, though it came out a little sharper than the original, “Pardon me.”

The butler turned on him with a somewhat uncomfortable, “Sir?” that was a tad more aggressive than was proper.

“We’re finished in the study,” the doctor explained, “Do you have somewhere prepared for us to interview the witnesses?”

“Will the dining room be sufficient?” the butler answered stiffly.

The doctor nodded and answered with a smile, “It’ll do quite nicely, thank you.”

The butler exchanged a glance with Holmes, who merely shrugged in an intimation of innocence, before leading them to the stately dining room that would serve as their base of operations for the next phase of the investigation. The room was rather sparse aside from the requisite period appropriate decorations. The table bore a few small scratches and stains that indicated a few meals had been eaten there recently, but not many. Mostly, it seemed to be a set piece like the rest of the house.

The butler made to leave with a sharp nod to the doctor and an easy wave to Holmes, but the doctor motioned to detain him.

“While you are here, we may as well interview you first.”

With another glance at Holmes, the butler nodded and took a seat across from them at the table.

“For starters, I don't believe I ever got your name,” the doctor began.

“You can call me Ames.”

The doctor frowned - that was a point against the butler. “Your full name, please.”

Holmes cut him off with a dismissive wave before the butler could refuse to answer and asked all too casually, “What was Mr. Douglas like as an employer?”

The doctor shot Holmes a glare, but accepted the line of questioning. “It was Mr. Douglas who hired you?”

The butler nodded. “I met with him personally.”

“And what terms were those?” the doctor pressed.

“That’s between me and my employer.”

Holmes nodded in agreement. “Of course. All we need is to know is what you observed on the night in question and then you’re free to go.”

“Now wait a minute, Holmes!” the doctor exclaimed. “That may be all you need to know, but I have a few other questions I’d like to get to.”

“Really? And what  _ essential _ questions did you have in mind?”

The doctor took a deep breath and tried to forget his insufferable companion.

At last, he turned to the witness and asked as cordially and professionally as he could, “If you don’t mind, I would like to begin with your own history, starting with your name please.”

Holmes made a noise of impatience, but did not interrupt. He had leaned back in his chair to watch the proceedings with the air of a critic observing a piece by an artist for whom he had very low esteem.

The butler considered for a moment, but seemed to take pity on the beleaguered doctor, “My name is Phillip Cole. John suggested I take on the name Ames while I worked here.”

“Do you know why?” the doctor asked with a glance at Holmes.

The detective continued to judge his performance in silence.

Mr. Cole shrugged. “Maybe he thought it fit the theme of the place better.”

They would come back to the question of Mr. Douglas, instead the doctor continued on in order - “Mr. Cole, where are you from?”

“London. I’ve lived in the city for most of my life,” Mr. Cole said.

“I wouldn’t live anywhere else,” Holmes put in with a wistful smile.

Watson tried to catch Holmes’s eye, but he was staring off into space with a distinct air of melodrama. Knowing him - a former spy no less - it was probably just an act, though Watson could not fathom to what ends.

The doctor forced himself back to the matter at hand. “Where were you employed before coming out here?”

“I was a bouncer at a bar in London.”

“How did you meet Mr. Douglas?”

“He came by the bar a few times, asked me a lot of questions, though he could have just asked for a resume” - Holmes chuckled - “eventually he offered me this job.”

“And what does your job entail?”

Mr. Cole shrugged. “Mostly delegating things to the maids and the rest of the staff. Mr. Douglas tells me what to do and I pass it along.”

“You don't have any prior experience as a butler,” the doctor remarked.

“None whatsoever.”

“Do you know why Mr. Douglas hired you for the job?” the doctor asked as delicately as he could.

“I guess he just wanted the extra pair of hands.”

“You said he specifically sought you out.”

“Maybe I looked the part.”

“I see…” the doctor said, torn between hiding his disbelief and pushing for a real answer.

Holmes seemed to have no such qualms and gave the witness a skeptical look.

“Well, he did seem nervous, the past few days especially, like he knew what was coming, but I'm no bodyguard,” Mr. Cole insisted.

The doctor had gleaned enough about Mr. Cole for the time being, so he turned to his late employer. “What was Mr. Douglas like?”

“You mean aside from all this?” Mr. Cole gestured at their surroundings.

The doctor smiled. “Yes, how would you describe him?”

“He seemed pretty normal otherwise, always stopped to chat with me when he had the time. Not afraid to speak his mind either. He got into a fight at the bar one time, didn't do too poorly either. He wasn't one to back away from a fight.”

That seemed to match the original rather closely, but that could have been the man himself or the butler’s invention.

“Did you know anything of his past?” the doctor asked.

Mr. Cole shook his head. “I didn't ask and he didn't say.”

“What about the other members of the household? Mr. Barker and Mrs. Douglas?”

Mr. Cole chuckled darkly. “If they weren't having an affair, well, I can't fathom what else they’ve been up to meeting in secret in the dead of night. John seemed to know it too, or at least suspect. He and Cecil were best friends until Ivy entered the room. Your little tiff earlier had nothing on the fights John and Cecil have and I for one can’t say I blame the man. Cecil practically lives here, no clue why John lets him.”

“How was the relationship between Mr. and Mrs. Douglas?”

“Seemed normal enough, I suppose. She is a lot younger than him, closer to Cecil’s age. She seemed to care about him in her way, always worried about him when he was out.”

“What happened on the night of Mr. Douglas’s death?”

“Nothing unusual, I don't think…” Mr. Cole trailed off in consideration. “They did have a woman over for dinner.”

“Did you get her name, by any chance?”

“Mary, I think.”

Watson tensed. It could not be the same, she would not go under the same name, this was the wrong case. And yet, Watson had also heard her posing as Miss Irene Adler in disguise.

“Did you get her last name?” He asked, though he wasn’t sure he wanted to know the answer.

“It started with a 'W,’ I think, Weston, no, Watson, that's what it was!”

Mary Watson.

Dr. John Watson blanched.

He remembered his dear, beloved wife, wasting away while he - a doctor, for goodness’s sake! - could only stand by and watch. Unlike Holmes, he had seen her die, the coffin he buried had not been empty. This- this was a mockery of her memory, the only thing of her he had left.

His fists clenched.

“Is everything alright?” Mr. Cole asked from a great distance away. “Do you know her?”

Watson forced himself back to the present and shook his head in an attempt at a coherent answer.

“Could you describe her to me?” he asked, his voice still a little choked.

“Sure,” Mr. Cole answered sounding anything but. “She was well dressed and all - not bad looking. She was small with short brown hair…” he trailed off as he searched his memory. “Very sure of herself. She was nice enough, but she almost acted like she owned the place.”

Watson nodded. That was her. She could have easily cut her hair and dyed it or worn a wig. She had used that name on purpose - it could not have been anyone else. He did not doubt that she had kept in character as she had when the doctor met her. It was unlikely that she had let anything slip. But still, he had to try.

“How does she know Mr. and Mrs. Douglas?” the doctor asked.

Mr. Cole shrugged. “I didn’t ask.”

“You must have heard something,” the doctor insisted.

Mr. Cole hesitated, but obliged, “I didn't overhear much, I wasn't eavesdropping. They seemed to be friends, if a little distant, maybe a bit awkward or something, but I didn't see anything.”

“Did you overhear any of their conversation?”

Mr. Cole glanced at Holmes before answering, “I don't think so… just small talk. If you don't mind my asking, what does this have to do with the murder? She left long before John - well - died. I saw her out myself.”

“An excellent question,” Holmes said and turned to the doctor with a pointed look.

The doctor glared at him. “It has everything to do with the case!”

“Do you really expect to gather anything from that line of questioning?” Holmes asked, but some of the edge in his voice was gone.

Still, the doctor bristled, even as he tried to focus on the witness. “If you don't know anything more about-” he did not want to honor her with the name she had falsely claimed, “ _ her _ , we may as well continue on to the crime itself. How did you spend the remainder of the evening?”

Holmes was mercifully silent as Mr. Cole answered, “Well, first John asked me to raise the drawbridge. It was down later than usual because of their little dinner party and he seemed a bit nervous. After that, I went to put away the dishes,” he said with a chuckle.

The doctor gave him a questioning look, and he explained, “When John told me to get out the silver for dinner, I thought he was joking. But no, there really was silver. It was in a pantry all the way on the far side of the house. When I went to take it out, it looked like it had never been used, it was badly in need of dusting. But they cleaned it up in the kitchen and used it for dinner.”

“What happened then?” the doctor pushed things back on track.

“I was putting away the silver when I heard someone frantically pulling at the bell - the house is full of bells and pulls so that John or anyone else can call me from wherever they are. I ran to the front of the house where I met Mrs. Allen - she’s the housekeeper. We found Cecil and Ivy arguing at the door to the study. At first I thought they were having a lover’s spat, but then Ivy shouted to us that John was dead. She said she had called the police and that there was nothing to be done, but I insisted on seeing for myself.” He shook his head like a man who now knew the error of his ways. “What I saw, well, I'm sure you've seen the pictures. I'm not ashamed to say it will haunt my nightmares for years to come.”

The doctor nodded. He remembered how the presumed Mr. Douglas had been found, he saw the body. The sight of a man with his face blown in had lingered in his nightmares even long after he knew the victim had earned his fate.

“Did anything more happen before the police arrived?” the doctor asked.

Mr. Cole shook his head. “It wasn't long, it's a short drive to town from here, though it doesn't seem it.”

“I believe that is all,” the doctor said, “Thank you very much for your cooperation.”

“You're welcome, good luck to the both of you,” Mr. Cole said and stood to take his leave.

“Please ask Mrs. Douglas to join us.”

Mr. Cole nodded and left them alone once more.

Once his footsteps had faded out of earshot, Holmes asked, “You mean to say you couldn't tell he was a bouncer? You must have seen how he stood at the door, blocking it as he invited us inside, the scrapes from fights with unruly patrons, and of course the 'concealed’ weapon.”

“I had my theories,” the doctor said.

“But only one fit all the facts.”

“I don't know,” the doctor exclaimed. “There are many other explanations I could think of, and many more I'm certain I couldn't. So much of this case hinges on who the suspects really are, I wanted to hear it from him.”

“You think our criminal mastermind would let something slip in an official interview?”

“One of his employees might. And no one can keep a story perfectly straight. If you ask enough questions they’re sure to make some sort of contradiction.”

“As is an honest witness. You won’t get anything directly tying the culprit to their crime this way, just loose suspicions.”

“Perhaps that’s all you see, but somehow I’ve managed by it,” the doctor retorted. “What method do you suggest?”

“Perhaps something a little more subtle, that’s all,” Holmes said with an enigmatic shrug.

“ _ I _ ’m a detective, not a spy!”

Holmes's gaze turned sharp and Watson readied himself for a retort, but suddenly the detective let out a harsh barking laugh.

“A distinct touch, Dr. Holmes,” he said with a mirthless smile.

The doctor frowned, but did not feel nearly as bad as he knew he should have. Instead of apologizing, he turned to face the door and wait for the next witness to arrive.

She did not take long to announce herself with a steady knock at the door.

Holmes was silent, so the doctor said, “Come in!”

The door swung open to make way for a middle aged woman whose dress and worn hands declared her to be the housekeeper.

“Good afternoon,” Holmes greeted her, his easy congeniality returned as though it had never gone. “Thank you for taking the time out of your busy day to answer a few questions for us.”

“Not at all. Mrs. Douglas sent me down ahead of her and said she’ll be ready soon,” the housekeeper explained.

“Let's get to it then,” the doctor said, “Do have a seat.”

She sat down and the questioning began. Holmes said little, only interrupting every so often to make some conversational comment that threatened to draw the witness away from the inquiry altogether. But they did not last long and on the whole he was a silent observer, even going so far as to feign boredom with an occasional yawn.

As far as the doctor could tell, Mrs. Amy Allen, as she identified herself, was just as she seemed to be. She told them that she was an experienced housekeeper from London who had been hired by Mr. Douglas to do a somewhat unusual, but well paying and otherwise reasonable job. Dr. Holmes believed her, though a background check would confirm or deny the sentiment.

She was reluctant to say too much about her employers beyond that they were generally polite and agreeable. When pressed, she acknowledged that there were not infrequent disputes between Mr. Douglas and Mr. Barker, but did not dare speculate about their cause.

Her testimony about the evening of the crime corroborated Mr. Cole’s account. She had met her employers’ dinner guest and identified her under the same alias. After dinner, Mrs. Douglas had gone upstairs and suggested Mrs. Allen turn in as well. She had heard a door slam, but no gunshot. Like Mr. Cole, she had been summoned by the ringing of the bell and had found Mrs. Douglas and Mr. Barker arguing in front of the study. She had also entered the study briefly and found the same grisly scene.

“After that I helped Mrs. Douglas upstairs. She was so shocked she could barely cry. I offered to keep her company, but she said she would rather be alone, so I returned downstairs to wait for the police to arrive,” Mrs. Allen concluded.

Her story matched the original sequence of events well, but she was, by all appearances, innocent. At the very least, the doctor doubted there was much more to be gained by questioning her more now. He reflexively glanced at Holmes, but the detective appeared lost to the world, his eyes were half shut, out of boredom or in thought the doctor did not know.

So he relied on his own judgement and said to Mrs. Allen with a smile, “Thank you very much for answering all of our questions, you're free to go.”

Holmes seemed to startle into awareness, but it was a little too forceful for the doctor to believe it.

“Yes, do have a nice afternoon,” he said as Mrs. Allen stood to leave. “Those petunias will bring some nice color to that patch by the windows.”

Her eyes widened in surprise, and then she let out a peal of laughter. “You must have seen them on your way in. I do hope so, you have to come by and see them this evening when I've planted them. Good afternoon to both of you as well, and good luck.”

With that, Mrs. Allen took her leave. Mrs. Douglas greeted her at the door and took her place at the table.

“Good afternoon,” the lady said as though there was nothing good about it, but she remained composed.

The doctor could not tell whether her voice carried some undercurrent of antagonism or just the pain of loss. Did she, like the original Mrs. Ivy Douglas, know her husband - if they truly were married - to still be alive and feared for his freedom, or was she completely in the dark as the housekeeper and butler seemed to be? Or was she but another actress in yet another murder staged as a piece of macabre theater?

And what of Holmes? The doctor glanced at his companion. He seemed to have roused himself from his pretended rest and was now hunched forward, examining Mrs. Douglas with a curious air. The doctor wondered what Holmes found so intriguing, but prepared himself for the worst. As unfortunate as it was, he had a much easier time of things when Holmes was feigning disinterest, even if it was a little unsettling not knowing what he had planned.

The doctor greeted Mrs. Douglas with a solemn nod. “I’m sorry for your loss.”

“Yes, a real tragedy,” Holmes said, almost dismissively.

Mrs. Douglas looked taken aback, as anyone would be by the detective’s tone and piercing gaze. But she asked without a hint of trepidation, “Have you found anything out yet?”

“We are doing everything we can,” the doctor answered, “and we hope that your testimony could help shine a little more light on what happened. No trifle is too small to be of use.”

“I fear there is little I can add. Have you spoken with Cecil yet?”

“What information do you think Mr. Barker will provide?” the doctor asked.

“I didn’t see anything; Cecil wouldn’t let me into the study, said it was too terrible. And he’s known John for much longer than I have.” She spoke in a very matter-of-fact, straightforward way, though her expression remained clouded.

“He’ll have his chance,” the doctor assured her. “Now, can I have your legal name?”

She gave him a look of confusion, but answered all the same, “Ivy Douglas.”

“And your maiden name?”

“Blackmore. Why? What does my name have to do with the case?”

“It’s just a legal matter and good practice to ascertain the identities of one’s witnesses. And where are you from?”

“Newton Abbot, in Devon, though I haven’t lived anywhere long,” she said with a dark chuckle. “As strange as this all is” - she gestured at the house around them - “I’ve really settled down since I married John-” her face fell.

She busied herself with her handkerchief and the doctor gave her a moment to recompose herself.

When she seemed ready, the doctor asked, “There was something unusual about your marriage?”

“I know this isn’t what you’d call a normal household. But I never thought anything like this would happen, John just had some peculiar tastes, that’s all.”

The doctor gave her another moment to recover before moving on, “You said you moved frequently. What for? Work?”

She shook her head. “You could call it youthful restlessness. I lived hand-to-mouth for a while, doing odd jobs or just living by what people were kind enough to give me.”

“How did you meet Mr. Douglas?”

She hesitated, drawing her handkerchief up to her face as though to preserve her appearance of self-possession. “I returned to London to try and get my life together. I was staying at a hotel and he happened to be staying there too - he had returned to England looking for a fresh start too. We met at the hotel bar and it wasn’t long before we were married.”

“And how did you meet Mr. Barker?”

“He’s an old friend of John’s from America. He moved back to England not long after we moved in here and since he’s been around more than he hasn’t.”

“What do you know of Mr. Douglas and Mr. Barker’s pasts? You said they knew each other from America?”

“They tell all kinds of stories of California and their time in Silicon Valley. That’s where they both made their fortunes mining virtual gold.”

“And that’s where they were before they came to England?”

“Yes.”

“What about their lives before then?”

“John avoided talking about his life before he went to California, but I could tell he was afraid of something from his past. He’s had nightmares and once I heard him murmur the name ‘Bodymaster McGinty.’ I asked him about it, but he refused to say any more. A few times, he mentioned a ‘valley of fear’ that he was afraid he would never escape, but that was all he would say about it. I can only assume that’s what happened.” Mrs. Douglas let out a small gasp and ducked behind her handkerchief once more.

She seemed to know her story at least, but whether it came from her or her husband was anyone’s guess. “Do you know why your husband had such peculiar tastes?” Dr. Holmes attempted.

“I always supposed he was just old fashioned,” she said with a shrug.

“Was there anything else that struck you as unusual about your life here?”

She shook her head.

“Mr. Cole and Mrs. Allen mentioned you had a guest last night, who was she?” the doctor asked.

“I think she’s a friend of John and Cecil’s - I don’t know her. Mary Watson, that was her name. Do you think she may have been involved? They did seem a little wary of her, but I was only there for a little while before I went upstairs.”

Before Dr. Holmes had a chance to continue questioning her about the night of the murder, there was a knock on the dining room door.

“Yes?” the doctor called out, perhaps a little impatient.

It was Mr. Cole with Mrs. Houghton in tow.

Dr. Holmes let out a sigh of relief and waved her inside at the same time as Holmes said, “Just a moment, Inspector, if you would be so kind as to wait outside until we’re done.”

She remained standing in the doorway, watching as the argument unfolded.

“What? Why?” the doctor demanded.

“Why do you feel the need for official oversight? You were doing plenty well on your own, weren’t you?” Holmes gave a dismissive wave and his tone suggested it didn’t really matter how well or not Watson was doing.

“What are you playing at?” the doctor snapped. It felt like Holmes was just making argument for argument’s sake.

“I just don’t appreciate your implication that we need official supervision,” Holmes retorted. The nonchalant way in which he said it only served to feed Watson’s ire.

“I let you come along to help! But you’ve done nothing but critique my methods and obstruct  _ my _ investigation. Mrs. Houghton and the other ‘officials’ have done more to contribute than you have.”

Watson glimpsed a flash of hurt in Holmes’s eyes, but it was gone before he had time to fully register it, and then Holmes was on his feet, towering over them all. Watson could feel a subtle undercurrent of powerful emotion radiating from him - his hands seemed to shake by his sides - but Holmes kept his tone perfectly casual. “I refuse to work under these conditions. If you don’t think you need my help, then so be it - see how you do without me.”

And with that, Sherlock Holmes slunk from the room.


	6. Darkness Before the Dawn

Mrs. Houghton glanced between Watson and the door, but the doctor had no answer, no explanation for Holmes’s departure.

She joined the doctor at the table and somehow they finished the interview. For all he could tell, Mrs. Douglas’s description of the night of the murder was almost the same as the real Mrs. Ivy Douglas’s account all those years ago - if it had differed at all, he didn’t notice it.

At last, the lady of the house took her leave. The doctor made to call for Mr. Barker, but Mrs. Houghton interceded.

“Is everything alright?” she asked, though she plainly knew it wasn’t.

The doctor just shook his head. He let out a sigh. “I don’t know what’s gotten into him. I swear, he’s not usually like this. I’m afraid he might be up to something.”

“Do you know what sort of something?”

He shook his head again. “I never do.”

For a moment, they were both silent. Mrs. Houghton made to speak, but the doctor beat her to it.

“Maybe it’s just been too long for the both of us. I was so happy to see him, but maybe it would have been better if we just kept to our separate lives.” Watson let out a heavy sigh. He brushed away the tears from under his eyes and fought to compose himself.

Mrs. Houghton handed him a tissue - which were supposed to be there for the witnesses. “I can take over the questioning, if you want.” She glanced at the door in a silent suggestion.

The doctor shook his head. “We should call for Mr. Barker.”

“Are you sure?”

He nodded. “Let’s get this over with and catch the culprit.” His eyes burned with grim determination.

Mrs. Houghton nodded and stood to summon Mr. Barker.

Mr. Cecil Barker soon arrived, looking the most nervous of anyone. He kept glancing between the detectives as though he expected to be accused of murder at any moment.

“What do you want to know?” he asked urgently. “If you think it was one of us, I think you’re barking up the wrong tree. You saw that card they found by the body, there’s something weird going on.”

The doctor motioned for silence and began, “Your legal name, if you please.”

“Cecil Barker.”

“Where are you from?”

“California, most recently,” he answered with more confidence, “and London before that.”

“Why did you go to California?”

“Why else?” Mr. Barker asked and answered his own question - “Gold. That’s how I met John, we both ended up working for a startup called Benito.”

“Did anything peculiar occur while you were there?”

“Not really” - he hesitated - “Not until after John left, that is. He left pretty suddenly, and I think it was just a few days later, a bunch of rough-looking guys showed up asking about him. I said I didn’t know anything and hoped they didn’t find him, because they clearly didn’t mean well.”

“Do you know anything about Mr. Douglas’s past?”

Again, Mr. Barker’s account stayed very close to the original; he had lived in Chicago, had a German wife who died of typhoid, and seemed frightened of something, but wouldn’t say what.

“Why did you return to London?” Dr. Holmes asked.

“I followed John,” Mr. Barker answered evasively - it seemed that was one question his script couldn’t answer for him.

“You must have been particularly close.”

“Yes, and I wanted to return home after spending so much time abroad,” Mr. Barker clarified.

It sounded like he was making things up as he went, but Dr. Holmes couldn’t prove he was lying, and even if he could, that alone would not connect him to the murder. So, Dr. Holmes turned to another line of inquiry, “What’s your relationship with Mrs. Douglas?”

Mr. Barker hesitated, but when he finally spoke, it was not what Dr. Holmes expected. “I don’t know her very well and I can’t say I trust her. I don’t know if she ever really loved John and she’s been behaving strangely ever since he died.”

Dr. Holmes took what he could get. “Behaving strangely in what way?”

Mr. Barker hesitated again and shrugged, suddenly seeming to regret what he had said. “Something’s just off, I guess.”

“You have no particular reason for your suspicion?”

“Just a hunch, it’s probably nothing.” Mr. Barker regained some steam as he continued, “Anyway, doesn’t all the evidence point to something about a secret society? You saw those footprints on the windowsill, someone must have come in from outside.”

Dr. Holmes tried one last time - “Anything you can tell us about Mrs. Douglas may provide some essential clue.”

Mr. Barker hesitated, but finally he shook his head. “I don’t know what I was saying, it’s just been…” he trailed off.

Dr. Holmes gave him a moment to compose himself before turning to the night of the crime.

Just as the other witnesses had described, Mr. Barker explained that he and Mr. Douglas had dined with Mary Watson - “Just an acquaintance of John’s, don’t know much about her myself” - and then he had turned in for the night before he was roused by the sound of a gun going off. He ran downstairs to find Mr. Douglas dead, hastily turned around to keep Mrs. Douglas from entering the room - hence the argument Mr. Cole reported - and ran for the police.

At last, when Dr. Holmes and Mrs. Houghton had run out of questions and it seemed Mr. Barker would give them no fresh clue, the doctor took his leave. He retired to a nearby hotel with designs on an early night. In truth, he spent a fair bit of the evening tossing and turning, occupied more by thoughts of Sherlock Holmes than the case at hand.

* * *

The next day, there was still much to be done. It should have been more than enough to distract the doctor from whatever Holmes was up to. There were more witnesses to interview and the doctor wanted to take another crack at Mr. Barker. He and Mrs. Douglas were the most suspicious of the lot and though they could easily have been working together - especially if what Mr. Cole said about them meeting frequently in the middle of the night was true - instead it seemed Mr. Barker was attempting to direct their suspicion towards Mrs. Douglas. It was beginning to look like Mr. Barker may have been the weak link in this chain.

Dr. Holmes returned to the manor as soon as he was ready the next morning. He kept an eye out for Sherlock Holmes, as much out of suspicion as hope, but the detective was nowhere to be found. Mrs. Houghton met the doctor at the drawbridge.

“I don’t suppose you know what your friend is doing in the gardens,” she asked as they stepped inside. “I saw him walking and talking with one of the maids.”

“No, he’s left me solidly out of the loop,” the doctor said with a frown. “I can assure you that it’s nothing indecent, at the least.”

Mrs. Houghton laughed. “That’s good, wouldn’t want to be accused of witness tampering.”

Mrs. Houghton and Dr. Holmes settled in the dining room and sent for the first of the six maids who maintained the house for the Douglases. The first interview was straightforward enough. She was an ordinary woman who needed the money and so agreed to the unusual terms for the uncommonly good pay. She knew nothing, saw nothing, and corroborated everyone.

The next girl was nervous. She came in shaking and before Dr. Holmes could ask much more than her name she cried, “Please don’t take me away! I haven’t done anything, never stole, hardly ever cheated, I swear it! My poor mother couldn’t bear the news! I don’t want to go to jail!”

Between Mrs. Houghton and Dr. Holmes they managed to calm her enough to answer a few questions, but she had nothing of use to say.

The third was mercifully normal, and then came the fourth.

“What do you know about your late employer, Mr. Douglas?” Dr. Holmes asked, as he had asked all the others.

“Nothing,” was her answer.

“Did you notice anything unusual?”

“No.”

“What were you doing the night of the murder?”

“Cleaning.”

It was a miracle Dr. Holmes had gotten her name out of her.

“People often find being questioned about a murder stressful,” Mrs. Houghton remarked between witnesses, “but those two had it bad.”

The next was nervous too. She was a bit older than the rest, the sort of person you might expect to be a little wiser and more clear headed, and she wasn’t distraught like the younger girl or stiff like the one before her, but she hesitated when Dr. Holmes so much as asked her name.

At last, he asked, “Is everything alright?”

“What do you mean?” she asked in a way that suggested she at least had a feeling as to what he was getting at.

“A lot of the maids have seemed a bit nervous when we were questioning them, is something wrong?” Dr. Holmes asked again.

She hesitated. Dr. Holmes could see the internal debate warring across her face.

Mrs. Houghton spoke up, “I know it’s a frightening situation, and being interviewed about it doesn’t help, but we’re not out to get anyone. We just want to find out who killed Mr. Douglas. Any information - anything you’ve seen or heard - could be of use to us. We just want the facts. Just because we’re talking to you doesn’t mean that you’re a suspect.”

Finally, the maid gave in. “It was just something Mr. Holmes said. The way he said it, it sounded a bit like you were out for blood. And if you do think one of us did it, the penalty would be pretty steep, wouldn’t it?”

“We only want to put the real culprit behind bars,” Mrs. Houghton said. “The most important thing right now is finding out who really did it. We won’t prosecute anyone unless we’re absolutely certain. The more you tell us, the better a chance we’ll have of catching them and the less likely it is we’ll suspect the wrong person.”

The maid appeared somewhat mollified, and Mrs. Houghton took over the questioning from there. The doctor could only sit and seethe - he could see what Holmes was up to clearly enough.

Still, when Mrs. Houghton was done, he had to ask the witness, “What did ‘Mr. Holmes’ tell you, exactly?”

The maid hesitated again and her eyes widened a little in fear. His anger showed more than it ought, but he couldn’t but see red. He could hardly believe Holmes had gone this far.

She explained reluctantly, “He wanted to talk to the person who did it, said they could get a better deal with him than with you. It sounded pretty convincing the way he put it.”

“Of course it did. He’s not even with the police, he doesn’t have that kind of power.” The doctor turned to Mrs. Houghton - “If you’ll excuse me.”

She nodded.

He swept out of the room as she finished up with the witness.

Without any idea of where Holmes was, he just marched through the house, glancing in every room as his anger mounted. Finally, he ran into Mr. Cole who directed him to the study, where Holmes was chatting idly with Mr. Barker. That, at least, was convenient.

Watson entered without bothering to knock and addressed Mr. Barker without sparing even a glance at Holmes, “I am afraid you’re being lied to and manipulated. I wouldn’t trust a word this man says.”

“How could you?” Holmes made a lame attempt to protest.

Mr. Barker sat stunned for a moment by the interruption, but he retorted quickly enough, “And he says not to trust you.”

“I take it he’s warned you of even an accomplice’s fate if tried for murder, and accused the official force of being willing to arrest anyone with even the slightest implication, which is the opposite of fact. I wonder if he hasn’t also offered to turn sides, maybe he’s played the criminal in an attempt to infiltrate the organization’s ranks as he tried to do with Mr. Falk - not that it worked.” With that, the doctor rounded on Sherlock Holmes himself and declared, “Your game is up.”

“Yes, you have seen to that,” Holmes said bitterly, though did not bother to move from where he was reclining on the sofa.

“If you’ll excuse me.” Watson turned back to Mr. Barker and said as politely as he could manage, “Would you mind answering a few further questions?”

The witness glanced between the two feuding detectives, his eyes wide in disbelief. “Whatever the hell is going on here, I’m out,” he declared at last. “You heard my testimony, I’ve got nothing left to say. Good luck with whatever you two have going on here.” With that, Mr. Barker took his leave and shut the door behind him.

Watson rounded on Holmes, whatever politeness he had managed gone without a trace. “I hope you’re pleased with yourself, because I assure you no one else is. Holmes, what have you been playing at?”

“I have been attempting to solve the case,” Holmes answered coolly.

“I know things haven’t been easy, but I never thought you’d sink so low as to purposely sabotage my investigation!”

“Well, now it seems we’re even, because you’ve ruined mine out of spite.”

“Your  _ plan _ was to turn everyone against me and ruin any chance my investigation had of succeeding just so the witnesses would like you a little more in comparison.”

“And your investigation was going so well, I’m sure.”

“I know you're better than I could ever be, you don't have to rub it in.” Watson was tired and frustrated, at the end of his rope.

Holmes’s eyes widened a little, as though that was not what he expected - what he had expected Watson didn’t know. At last, he said with a mirthless smile, “You do yourself a disservice, Watson, after all, you’ve managed to render me obsolete.”

“Is that what this is about?” Watson demanded. “There can only be one consulting detective in England, so you’re trying to force me out of the job?”

“Yes, a very reasonable conclusion,” Holmes sneered, his disbelief written plainly across his face.

“Why then, Holmes? Why would you do such a thing?”

Holmes seemed ready to make some retort, but as Watson’s question registered his conviction faded. At last, he said, still bitter, but somewhat subdued, “You’ve got it all backwards.”

“Really?” Watson snapped.

Holmes continued before Watson could argue further, “After all this time, you’re still trying to prove yourself. But you’re the real detective now and I’m but an amateur who has not yet earned my keep. I came to help and if you weren’t going to let me I would do things my way and show you. My dear Watson, I owe you my sincerest apologies. The truth is that you have long since grown past any need for my assistance.”

That was it then, the truth Watson had been trying to avoid since Holmes’s miraculous return - that they had been reunited only to find they no longer had any need for the other. Watson tried to brush the tears from his eyes. “So what if we don’t need each other anymore? I still want to work with you, can’t that be enough?” he exclaimed in exasperation.

“You do? I’ve hardly proven myself to be a worthy partner.”

“No, you haven’t,” Watson acknowledged, “But after so long, I find I can’t bear to see you go.” He hesitated. “One more try, for old time’s sake?”

“If you are amenable to it, I can hardly refuse,” Holmes said with a smile. “I ought to warn you that I’ve become rather unaccustomed to collaboration, but I suppose I’ve already made that obvious. I swear I will do everything in my considerable power to prove myself worthy of it.”

“No more going behind my back?”

“You drive a hard bargain, my dear Watson, but you are right, it’s only fair.”

Holmes stood at last, a hand outstretched to shake on it. Their hands lingered together, neither quite ready to pull away.

“Shall we?” Watson gestured toward the door.

“Of course.” 

They left the study side by side.

“You should also apologize to Inspector Houghton,” Watson remarked on their way back to the dining room.

Holmes nodded, but he did not have a chance to reply.

Inspector Mason accosted them with a shout, “There you are! Both of you better have a good explanation for all this or I swear you’re never setting foot on a crime scene again!”

The Inspector strode over to meet them and Mrs. Houghton came running after.

“What’s going on?” Mrs. Houghton asked, her question directed toward the doctor more than anyone else. “Mr. Barker just walked out and refuses to talk to anyone. He said something happened with the two of you and that he ‘doesn’t want any part of this crazy operation.’”

“Holmes and I just had a bit of an argument,” the doctor explained, a little sheepish, “Unfortunately Mr. Barker was caught up in the beginning of it, but everything is resolved now. Our apologies for the disturbance.”

“Now listen here!” Inspector Mason cut in. “Are you saying you just lost us a prime witness just because you couldn’t keep a handle on whatever’s going on between you? I didn’t like the sound of no specialists from the start, and by God I won’t have you mucking around my crime scene any longer! Out! Both of you!”

“Just one moment, Inspector,” Holmes protested with the same ingratiating tone he had used when they first arrived, “what about the case?”

“I want you out so the rest of us have a chance at solving it,” Inspector Mason snapped.

“I’m sorry, Inspector,” the doctor said - it was time to apologize, not bargain. “You’re right, of course, we shouldn’t have allowed our personal dispute to interfere with the investigation, but I assure you that everything has been resolved and it will not happen again, and Holmes is right, there is still a case that needs solving. If you just give us until the end of the day-”

Inspector Mason cut him off, “If you have a plan, I’d be happy to hear it and we can carry it out ourselves, without either of you mucking around, frightening off the witnesses.”

“You must understand that Watson and I are uniquely equipped to solve this case. Not only do we have specialized skills and years of experience, but we have a particular familiarity with the incident this crime is imitating.” Watson couldn’t tell if Holmes actually thought he had a chance of convincing the Inspector, or was just trying to buy them time.

As little as Watson wanted to admit it, Inspector Mason was right; they needed to have a plan or they would just keep questioning the witnesses in circles without getting anywhere. Holmes had originally solved the case by convincing Mr. Douglas to emerge from the secret passageways where he had been hiding - it turned out that he had survived an attack from an intruder and left the man dead in his place. It didn’t explain all of the facts they had been presented with, but a faithful rendition could hardly omit such an essential detail.

Finally, Inspector Mason had enough. “Get out! Both of you!”

“Wait!” the doctor cried. “We do have a plan.”

Holmes shot him a skeptical glance, but did not say a word.

“Does anyone have a match? We must raise the call of fire!”

“What?” Inspector Mason demanded.

The doctor dropped his voice. “It’s one of Holmes’s old tricks” - they shared a conspiratorial glance. “We have reason to believe there is someone hiding in the walls - this is an old house, it’s liable to have secret passageways, and if it didn’t originally, there is a chance they were added during a recent renovation. We can smoke him out, and then you’ll have your man.”

Inspector Mason glanced over at Mrs. Houghton and to Watson’s relief, she nodded.

Holmes ran for something to light that would produce a good amount of smoke and the others scattered through the house to raise the call of fire. The servants and residents poured out of the house onto the lawn while the detectives patrolled, searching for the culprit and periodically calling for anyone lost in the ‘fire.’

At last, the four of them reconvened downstairs. The house was by all appearances empty, with no stranger among those who had left.

“You had your chance,” Inspector Mason said. “Now, out, both of you.”

“He may still be hiding in the walls,” the doctor attempted.

“If he is,  _ we _ ’ll find him.”

“Come along, Watson, if they don’t want our help it’s their loss.” Holmes made for the door and motioned for the doctor to follow.

Mrs. Houghton glanced between the doctor and Inspector Mason, looking ready to interrupt, but uncertain if she should.

“It’s alright,” the doctor said. “Now that we’ve been furnished with the key evidence, I believe we will be of most use back at Baker Street. If there are any fresh developments, do call, and I’ll do the same if we think of anything.”

“Of course. Hopefully we’ll find him hiding in the walls and that’ll be that, though I’m sorry you’ll miss it.”

“If he leads us to his employer, then it will be more than worth the wait,” the doctor said, and then he turned to follow Holmes back home to Baker Street.

* * *

“No luck?” Holmes said as Watson hung up the phone and returned to his usual seat by the fireplace.

Watson shook his head. “They found a secret passageway, but no one inside it. The whole house has been thoroughly searched; either our man has escaped, or he never existed at all.”

“Perhaps it is not so grim as that. There is still Mrs. Douglas and Mr. Barker, after all,” Holmes suggested.

“That’s Inspector Mason’s theory, and he’s probably right, but he doesn’t have enough evidence to hold either of them.” Watson rounded on Holmes. “I don’t suppose you discovered any incriminating evidence in your investigation?” he asked pointedly.

“Nothing conclusive, no, but I’ve not come away entirely empty handed. According to the maids - corroborated by Mr. Barker himself - Barker and Mrs. Douglas have been at odds since Mr. Douglas’s death. Their feud apparently began when the corpse was discovered; Mrs. Douglas was the one who found her husband’s body, and she attempted to prevent Barker from entering the room when he arrived.”

Watson nodded as the pieces came together. “At first I thought they might be working together; they even used some of the same language when describing Mr. Douglas and Mr. Barker’s past, but there did seem to be some enmity between them. Mr. Barker especially almost seemed ready to turn witness against Mrs. Douglas.”

“Yes, he was close, if only we’d had more time!”

Watson hesitated. “He may have merely been trying to redirect suspicion from himself.”

“Do you honestly believe that, Watson?”

“It’s a possibility, at least,” Watson insisted tersely. More thoughtfully, he remarked, “It is curious that Mrs. Douglas was attempting to prevent Mr. Barker from seeing his friend’s body. Don’t you remember? It was the real Mr. Barker who dissuaded Mrs. Douglas from entering the room and seeing her dead husband. It’s a peculiar reversal, especially given how close these crimes have stayed to your old cases.”

Holmes leaned in toward Watson, his long fingers tented with the tips pressed together. “And...?”

“In the original case it was all a ruse - she had already gone in and seen her husband alive. Under the circumstances, I would assume this was similar, but the fact that it doesn’t quite line up with the original and now they’re at odds when they should be laughing together suggests that there really was something there that Mrs. Douglas didn’t want Mr. Barker to see. Maybe this time, Mr. Douglas was unable to avoid his fate and Mrs. Douglas - though I hesitate to call her his wife - knew it.”

“Excellent, Watson!” Holmes proclaimed, and his eyes did seem to shine with pride, though Watson couldn’t help but hear a little condescension in his words. “The only question that remains is what has become of our intruder, unless you believe Mrs. Douglas performed the deed herself?”

“Even if she knew, I am reluctant to think her capable of having committed the crime.”

“You have always given women too much credit, my dear Watson. At the very least she was much too cagey to allow me to interview her.”

Holmes leaned back in his chair and rested his head on his fingertips. His keen gaze turned distant as incisive discourse gave way to abstraction, his eyes seemed to stare straight through the wall above the mantle. Finally he snapped back to attention. “Well, no matter. I’m certain you’ll think of something.” He gave Watson a cryptic smile, and looked like he was just about ready to spring from his chair with the suggestion of a leisurely walk that would inevitably prove to be anything but.

“You have a plan,” Watson accused.

“Just the beginnings of one.”

“And when were you planning on letting me in on it?”

Holmes seemed to deflate back into his chair. “You are right, Watson. I am only wondering what motive one could possibly have for assassinating our Mr. John Douglas.”

“It’s clearly a kind of mania for recreating your old cases.”

Holmes shook his head. “One person, perhaps, could be consumed by such a mania, but as thrilling as your writing is, I cannot imagine that all the people necessary to coordinate such elaborate scenes have been so swayed by it. No, I can only imagine that there is some money in the murder itself, but without knowing Douglas’s true identity, I can only speculate.”

“If the sufferer is wealthy enough, he could provide the necessary funds,” Watson suggested.

“No, whoever it is who has been so taken by your accounts of my cases to orchestrate this” - Holmes hesitated at a loss for the right word - “recreation has clearly been deeply involved in the planning of the crimes; few details have been overlooked. And we must give them some credit for their criminal capabilities, as our combined effort has failed to catch them. I doubt such an experienced criminal would be inclined to spend money so wantonly as to hire their peers to undertake an enterprise with no promise of a reward, especially not something so dire as murder. Someone was willing to pay for this man’s death.”

Watson glanced away as he turned the case over in his mind. At last he remarked, “Mrs. Houghton mentioned that Mr. Duvall - our Mr. Sholto - was involved in something not entirely right, and the men presented as Drebber and Stangerson had been suspected of some criminal activity in Utah. Is it not unlikely for someone so taken with your work to have a misplaced sense of justice?”

“I hope I have not inspired such ill-conceived notions of justice. No, I expect these crimes are more likely the result of internal matters in some criminal organization. If I am not mistaken, we will have to turn to America to identify our Mr. Douglas as well.”

Watson hesitated. “Perhaps you are right, but it still doesn’t quite line up. Thus far the perpetrator has kept so close to your old cases, I don’t believe if he wanted to kill someone he would make his victim play Mr. Douglas who was supposed to survive. I would think instead he’d pose as Douglas himself and try to catch the intruder by surprise as Mr. Douglas did. I confess it’s a risky way to plan it, but it seems the only way. And,” he continued, gaining steam, “Mrs. Douglas and Mr. Barker being at odds suggests that something didn’t quite go to plan. I’d say it points to an intruder who was the intended target, but got away.”

Holmes suddenly leaped to his feet. “And I think I know where to find him!”

“Where?”

“It has been a long time, but I do recall a long vigil I held in that fateful study. If the officials have not yet dredged the moat, it is past time they give it a try.”

“I’ll call Mrs. Houghton,” Watson said, standing at last.

* * *

Holmes and Watson were sitting at lunch a little after their usual fashion when the phone rang.

Watson stood to answer it. “Hello?”

“Dr. Holmes?” Mrs. Houghton confirmed on the other end.

“Yes, I am he.”

“You were right about the moat. We think we’ve found the intruder - he’s been in the water for about the right amount of time at least, and he was wearing the yellow coat you described. We’re working on identifying him now.”

“Is there any indication of who killed him?”

“Well, your story about him taking out John Douglas and then someone else doing him in lines up; it looks like he was shot by something a lot quieter than that sawed-off shotgun we found. And we may have a suspect. Unfortunately, Ivy Douglas fled last night. She must have found out we were going to dredge the moat. I don’t suppose you have any idea where we could find her.”

The doctor shook his head. “No, I’m afraid not,” he said bitterly. “What about Mr. Barker?”

“We’re bringing him in for questioning now, you’re welcome to come and watch. It looks like he might be willing to talk now that he’s been abandoned.”

“We wouldn’t miss it.”

The doctor hung up the phone, and he and Holmes hastily finished their lunch before heading out into the blustery day. When they arrived at the Scotland Yard, they were greeted by Inspector Gregson, who led them back to where Mr. Barker was being held for questioning. He took them into a darkened corridor that looked in on a barren room through a large window that must have looked like a mirror from the other side. Mrs. Houghton was already inside with the suspect, seated opposite him at a plain desk.

“So I went to California, to Hollywood,” Mr. Barker was saying - his voice echoed from a pair of speakers in the ceiling - “thought I’d get to be a movie star. That’s where I met Tom - he was playing John Douglas. He wanted to be an actor too, but it didn’t work out for either of us. Money just got tighter and we thought we might put our acting skills to” - he hesitated - “better use. Turned out we had a lot better luck with that than we ever had with getting into the movies, but the more money we made the more trouble it brought with it.

“One day, Ivy and - well, you’d know her as Mary Watson - showed up. She knew we’d gotten in over our heads and now she said someone was after Tom. We’d been worried about something like that and were just happy to have the warning. She said she’d run into some trouble too and had a plan to catch him if we worked together. She found that old abandoned house to hole up in and suggested Ivy pose as Tom’s wife. Apparently the guy who was after us had some obsession with these old mysteries, so we set everything up to look like one and I guess he walked straight into our trap. But it turns out the joke was on us.”

“Could you walk me through what happened that night?” Mrs. Houghton asked.

He nodded. “Mary came over for dinner to make sure everything was all set up and explain the plan. After she left, Ivy and I were supposed to go upstairs and wait for the sound of a gun, while Tom locked up the house. He was supposed to find the guy and get the jump on him, and then we’d make it look like he was the one who had been killed, getting them off our trail once and for all. I didn’t want to leave him alone, but she insisted that was the only way the trap would work.

“I heard the gunshot - I don’t know how it didn’t wake up the whole neighborhood - and ran downstairs. Ivy was already there and she wouldn’t let me in the room, said he was already in hiding and the maids were coming so we had to hurry. I demanded she let me see him, but by then the maids were already there and I had to run to the police.

“I swear we thought he was after Tom. The whole setup was a bit strange, but we’re actors, we’ve done stranger things. We just thought it was a clever way to save our necks.” He hesitated. “In the end, I don’t think Tom had the guts to kill a guy in cold blood, even if it was to save himself.”

Mrs. Houghton gave him a moment to collect himself before asking, “Can you tell us anything about the women who got you involved in this whole scheme?”

He shook his head. “They said they were actresses too, but Ivy’s about as wooden as they come and clearly they had something else going on. I didn’t even know Ivy’s name; we just called her Ivy Douglas. I heard her call her friend Jamie a couple times, if that helps. The name Mary Watson was just in case anyone asked; she introduced herself to us as Moriarty.”


	7. The Final Problem

“If she fancies herself Moriarty, she may be inclined to share his fate,” Holmes remarked without preamble.

Watson glanced up from the book he was reading. It took a moment for him to register what Holmes had said and another to realize what Holmes was suggesting. As the gears finally slid into place he said, “No.” Just in case Holmes had not heard it the first time, he repeated, “No. I never went back there and we’re not doing it now.”

When Holmes replied, he spoke cautiously, “I confess I wasn’t thinking about your feelings on the matter, and for my thoughtlessness I sincerely apologize. However, I fear it may be the only way to put an end to these crimes once and for all, or at least the best that I can think of. We can’t just sit by and wait as more people are killed until she chances to make some fatal mistake. You know as well as I that we have no further leads; Barker has said all he knows, and Ivy Douglas remains missing. And it’s nearly a sure bet. She has even given the name Moriarty; I cannot believe she expects it to end any other way.”

Watson interrupted, unable to contain himself any longer, “It’s too much of a risk.”

“I survived once, didn’t I?” Holmes attempted with a crooked smile. “If I could face Moriarty and come out on top, surely we can best this imitator.”

Watson shook his head. “I’m sorry Holmes, I can’t let you do it again. If anyone goes, it will be me alone.”

“No!” Holmes even seemed to surprise himself with the outburst. His expression softened. “It seems you’re not the only one who has been a little lonely these past hundred . I can promise I won’t take a single step without you beside me.”

Watson hesitated, but at last he said, “No. There has to be another way.”

“Perhaps,” Holmes admitted. “You’re right that were our places reversed, it’s not a risk I’d care to take.”

* * *

Several days passed without a case or even a client knocking on their door.

“You’re certain it would work?” Watson asked, breaking the contemplative silence.

It was Holmes’s turn to glance up from the day’s paper, but it did not take long for him to gather his thoughts. “You have seen how closely she has kept to your accounts of my cases-”

“But not close enough to get caught,” Watson reminded him. “Somehow, her allies manage to disappear in time.”

“That’s why the risk is a necessary one. We already have enough evidence against her. With her taste for the dramatic, she couldn’t possibly resist the opportunity to bring us down once and for all in a final confrontation between the great detective, Sherlock Holmes, and the criminal mastermind, Professor Moriarty.” Holmes’s eyes shone with the thrill of the chase and Watson felt his heart begin to race in anticipation.

“But it isn’t the same,” Watson said, dragging them both back down to Earth.

Holmes stared at him for a moment before he finally relented, “No, you’re right, it isn’t.”

“We can’t repeat the past and I have no desire to.” Watson could not quite keep the edge of emotion out of his voice. “Even if you were to face Moriarty again, we don’t know if you would be so fortunate, and this isn’t Moriarty that we’re facing. We’re not the only ones with the benefit of hindsight, and we don’t know what she’ll do with it.”

“Now, now,” Holmes began with condescending dismay, but stopped himself short. “I mean to say that we do have some inkling of how she will behave - we have not gleaned nothing from all of the crimes she has orchestrated. She prefers to remain as close to the crime she is imitating as possible, even down to the language, as you have said, and only allows her subordinates to escape when the culprit could have done so. In the instance, she even allowed the crime to develop naturally when it would have been easier and more certain to murder her target and bring the body to the scene. With all that, I have little doubt that she will follow us to Reichenbach and bring a single sniper - Mrs. Ivy Douglas, if I’m not mistaken - who will not act unless absolutely necessary.”

“But say we do run to the continent and mirror our old steps,” Watson insisted, “it’ll be an obvious trap.”

“All it will tell her is that we are prepared for a confrontation, which we are. Her chance is as good as ours, and we all know it.”

Watson’s eyes narrowed in distaste. “I don’t like it. It is a good opportunity, but not with those odds. We’ll need backup and plenty of it.”

“Now, that will certainly make her suspicious,” Holmes protested.

“Do you believe we could truly make an arrest on that narrow precipice? Any struggle is more likely than not to throw us all into the spray. Just because it didn’t happen once doesn’t mean it will go your way again. And the officials are capable of subtlety from time to time.”

Holmes considered it. At last he answered a tad reluctantly, “Very well.”

“Then I will call Inspector Houghton,” Watson said, not entirely sure about it himself, but still, he stood and picked up the phone.

* * *

When every detail had been planned and all the pieces were in place, at last Holmes and Watson set their plan in motion.

The doctor walked up to the front desk of a quiet hotel. “Reservation for Holmes.”

The man behind the desk clicked around on his computer for a moment and gave him some papers to sign before finally handing over an electronic key that looked more like an ID or credit card. Watson thanked him and he and Holmes made their way up to their room. It was far from the nicest hotel in London, but it mattered little; they wouldn’t be there for very long.

It took a few tries, but between the two of them they finally got the door open. They stepped inside and immediately got to work.

Holmes opened his suitcase on the bed and handed Watson a bundle of clothes. “You might as well look the part,” he said with a wry smile.

Watson accepted them with a breath that could have passed for a sigh and set about unbuttoning his collar. “We’re actually going through with this” - it was almost a question, asking that it not be so.

“We’ve seen to every precaution. We will only fail if our Moriarty does not take the bait, and there is no doubt about that.”

Watson frowned. He wished he had Holmes’s confidence, but everything had been taken from him once, he could not bear to have it happen again. He was sorely tempted to call the whole mad thing off, or to run to the continent alone, leaving Holmes safely behind in London. But either would have been selfish. They had a plan, the best he could do was stick to it.

He took a long, steadying breath and tried to focus on one step at a time. Methodically, he changed out of his suit, into an even more antiquated priest’s frock. It didn’t quite fit right, but he presumed that was part of the disguise.

Once Watson was dressed, Holmes stepped back to admire his handiwork. “I’ve never seen a more pious gentleman. You would hardly look out of place at the Vatican. Now, just a few finishing touches.”

He seated Watson on the edge of the bed and took out his make-up case, full of powders and brushes. Watson craned over to get a better look.

“You must stay still,” Holmes admonished, but it didn’t hold any heat.

Watson reluctantly faced forward. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Holmes take out a broad brush.

He drew it across Watson’s cheek with gentleness, the bristles tickled against his skin. Watson let his eyes fall shut as Holmes gradually painted lines onto his face. His chest was tight with nerves about the upcoming chase, but there was something soothing about the soft, repetitive caress, each motion no doubt purposeful and carefully planned. Holmes knew what he was doing and it was the least Watson could do to try and keep his nerves in check.

His makeup done, Holmes carefully pulled back Watson’s hair and slid a wig over it. His long, nimble fingers worked their way around Watson’s head, rustling through his hair as they adjusted the band here and there.

At last Holmes sat back and declared, “You look like a new man.”

Watson’s eyes blinked open in the suddenly bright light. It took a moment for him to register the face in the mirror. An old man, almost as old as Watson truly was, with deep wrinkles and sun-darkened skin, peered back at him.

“Why, I can hardly recognize myself,” he exclaimed, and as he spoke the face before him almost seemed to transform as familiar features made themselves known.

“Carry yourself a little stiffer,” Holmes suggested. “Do not forget your venerable .”

Watson nodded, trying to make the gesture as halting as he could.

“Better,” Holmes said, though Watson could tell he still had a long way to go.

Then they both hesitated.

Their easy banter gave way to an awkward, uncomfortable silence, revealing the tension that had been lurking beneath the surface since before they left Baker Street.

“I best be going,” Holmes said at last, and got to his feet.

Watson followed suit. “Be careful.”

“And you. But I doubt Miss Moriarty knows our game yet. No, the chase will not truly begin until we alight on the continent. I wonder how long it will take for her to realize…” Holmes trailed off in thought, but he quickly found himself again - “No matter, she will follow, and she won’t risk it until Reichenbach.”

Watson tensed at the word.

“You remember your route?” Watson asked at last, more for something to say than for the answer.

“I am not so old as to be forgetting things.”

Watson gave him a look.

“Do not fear, my dear Watson, this business will all be over soon enough.”

“Don’t say that,” Watson snapped. He took in a deep, steadying breath and slowly let it out. “I’m sorry, Holmes,” he said, his voice still a little shaky. His hands were quivering. “I know it’s not the same, but still I find myself dreading the end.” His voice fell as he spoke.

Holmes reached out and clasped Watson by the shoulder. “I’m here and I will not leave you again,” Holmes said, his voice firm. “We have done everything in both our considerable power to ensure that we come out alive, so that is what will occur. There is hardly a chance of failure.”

Watson nodded and attempted a smile of his own.

Holmes was not entirely satisfied, but he withdrew his hand and bade Watson farewell, “I will see you at Victoria Station.”

“Yes.”

With that, Sherlock Holmes turned, stepped out the door, and made his way down the hall as though he had not a care in the world.

Watson waited maybe fifteen minutes before his nerves got the best of him. He straightened his frock and made for the door like a man on a mission. Only as he was about to swing it open and stride out into the hall did he remember to bow his back and tried as best he could to hobble out. He had little patience for the slow, halting gait of the old priest he was trying to impersonate, but somehow he made it down the stairs and out the door, into the bright morning.

He imagined Holmes racing across the city, darting from cab to cab, as he hailed his own and set off straight for the station. Holmes was thankfully easy to pick out of the crowd on the platform, tall and lean, making no effort to conceal himself. For all of Watson’s of imitation, there was something strange about playing Holmes’s role so purposefully, especially with his old friend right there in front of them. And Watson had never taken up Holmes’s penchant for disguises.

Still, Watson felt a little more confident in his shuffle as he made his way over to where Holmes was standing. A young officer stationed by the turnstyle offered to help Watson with his bag and he tried to direct her in a muffled voice. He only belatedly remembered that his English was supposed to be limited besides, but at least that way he had an excuse to speak as little as possible.

He thanked her in what little Italian he knew and settled in to wait for the train. He tried to catch Holmes’s eye, but Holmes’s gaze seemed to slide right over him as he scanned the crowd, almost managing to look nervous as he waited for someone to meet him.

It wasn’t long before the train arrived and he asked for Holmes’s help with his luggage as clumsily as he could. Holmes distractedly obliged.

When Watson tried to take the seat next to him, Holmes protested in a voice that wasn’t quite his own, “I’m sorry, you must understand, I’m waiting for my friend.”

“I- I don’t understand,” Watson attempted.

“I’m saving this seat for my friend,” Holmes insisted, seemingly blind to Watson’s struggle.

He was relieved when the doors slid shut and Holmes looked away to scan the once more, giving him the opportunity to remark with a little well-deserved impatience, “My dear Holmes, you have not even condescended to say good morning.”

Holmes jumped a little and exclaimed, “Good heavens! How you startled me!”

“Not too badly, I hope,” Watson said without much sympathy.

“No,” Holmes said with a chuckle, keeping his voice low. “My apologies, Watson, but an actor, you are not.”

Watson did not dignify him with an answer. Instead he remarked, “I wonder if Moriarty herself will make an appearance.”

“I doubt she’s aware of our plans just yet, but I expect it will not take long.”

Watson nodded. “She’s been keeping a close eye on us.” He recognized one woman in particular sitting on the other side of the train, whom he had often seen near Baker Street, often lingering in view of their door.

It was a short ride to Kings Cross, but they arrived barely in time for the next train for Paris. Fortunately, Holmes got them quickly through security and they made it onto the train without incident. Watson fell into his seat, grateful for the chance to breathe.

They weren’t on board for long. They got off at Ashford, abandoning their empty luggage on the train. It wasn’t quite Canterbury, but after much they had decided against the half-hour detour. So, from Ashford, they caught a series of trains along the coast. The ride was a largely peaceful one. They alternated between easy conversation and companionable silence. But, when silence did fall, Watson found it difficult not to ruminate upon their dangerous errand. The woman had followed them from the underground, but thus far nothing out of the ordinary had occurred.

They stopped for a late lunch in Lewes, and then went on to Newhaven to wait for the evening ferry. They brought dinner with them, and arrived in Dieppe, France close on midnight. There was no longer a night train to Brussels, so they stayed overnight in Dieppe and continued on to Brussels in the morning.

Miss Moriarty had missed her chance in London, so instead it was in Brussels that they found themselves dogged at every corner. First a van barely missed them as they crossed an avenue, then a brick crashed to the sidewalk beside them, and finally they were accosted by a rough looking man with a club who was thankfully scared off by the police before he bloodied Holmes’s knuckles. That night the hotel was evacuated on account of a fire that did more damage causing a nuisance than destroying anything. Of course, none of the perpetrators were caught.

Otherwise they spent a leisurely two days in Brussels before they went on to Strasbourg, and the day after that to Geneva. From there, they went from town to town, hiking where they could, and taking busses where they could not. It was as beautiful and foreboding as Watson remembered, with rocky peaks towering above and sloping valleys below. He did not let Holmes out of his sight. To his relief Holmes seemed to accept it and did not try to venture far.

The last assault came, as they expected, at the Gemmi pass, where a large rock fell from the peaks above, past where they had just been standing moments before, and down into the lake below with a tremendous splash. They never saw the perpetrator. Thankfully no one was hurt.

Finally, they stopped in Meiringen. They stayed in one of many hotels that had popped up in the area since they had been there last.

That night, both of them were reluctant to go to sleep. Neither had much to say, or rather neither was quite ready to put their churning thoughts to words, instead they sat in silence, too keyed up to go to bed. Holmes sat doubled over, his keen eyes fixed on the wall ahead as though he could read volumes in the wallpaper, or perhaps see straight through the wall. Watson was tired, but his racing heart had other plans. Not for the first time on their harrowing journey, he longed for a smoke.

Finally, Watson got up the courage to speak, “Holmes, please hear me out. Only one of us is needed to bait Miss Moriarty into our trap, and the case was mine from the start. Stay in the hotel tomorrow, let me go alone to the fall.”

Holmes snapped to attention. He answered a little too lightly, “We wouldn’t want to raise Miss Moriarty’s suspicions. She should be expecting two of us, after all. She may hesitate if she finds only one.”

“Then return with the messenger boy. You know she’ll send one.”

“I’m sorry, Watson, but you won’t be getting rid of me that easily. I know it’s selfish of me, but I want to see this through to the end, and I cannot bring myself to let you go alone. I let you follow the messenger the first time because I couldn’t bear to risk you at all.”

“And what if you die” - Watson could no longer hold back.

“And what about you?” Holmes met Watson’s eyes, his gaze steady, but it betrayed some of his heart. “Perhaps I’ve become too confident in my own immortality, but we’ve planned it well and besides, I know you wouldn’t allow any danger to come to me.” He hesitated. “I’m afraid you are in a graver danger than I.”

* * *

The next morning, both of them left the hotel early to hike to the falls. Watson faltered as the sight of the familiar treacherous peaks, but Holmes took his hand and helped him up the path. They walked in silence, neither quite ready for what was to come. All too soon, they came upon the fearsome fall, its roar louder than it was in any of Watson’s nightmares.

There, they waited. Watson wished he could have brought his revolver, but it would not go on the train. Miss Moriarty likely lacked the same scruples.

It was not long before the messenger boy reached them, asking for an English doctor to treat a dying Englishwoman at the hotel. Watson glanced at Holmes, hoping he would take the out that was offered, but he knew well what Holmes’s response would be. So, the boy returned down the path alone.

Soon after he disappeared out of sight, Watson spotted a woman coming around the bend. He shouted over the fall and Holmes leaped to his feet, ready for a fight. As she drew nearer, Watson easily recognized her features; this was the very same woman who had made a mockery of his late wife. He was not surprised, but the sight of her sent a jolt of anger through him.

He clenched his fists and yelled as soon as she was close enough to hear him, “Why? Why would you do such a thing?”

She grinned and seemed to laugh - he could not hear her over the roar of the fall.

“Who are you?” Watson demanded.

“Jamie Moriarty,” she answered proudly, striding toward them and the fearsome falls as though she had not a fear in the world, “the great granddaughter of Professor James Moriarty, here to finish the work he started.”

Even standing on the precipice, the roar of the falls echoing in their ears, still Holmes argued, “Professor Moriarty had no children.”

“So the public was led to believe, but his descendants have not forgotten him. I have reclaimed my family name and will bring it back to the notoriety it so deserves!”

If she was going to say more, they did not hear it, for at her triumphant conclusion they heard a shot go off and a plume of smoke burst out of a rock on the other side of the falls. They hardly had a chance to respond as a squad of officers came running up the trail and surrounded Miss Moriarty. Without her sniper, she was thoroughly out gunned and quickly subdued.

Holmes and Watson followed them all down the trail. For how smoothly it had gone, Watson was still a little weak with relief, while Holmes seemed to be bursting with all the energy he had not needed to expend.

He laughed and declared, clapping Watson on the back, “Well done, my dear fellow. I suppose I owe you an apology for underestimating your advice. It all went off charmingly. I even find myself wishing there had been a bit more of a scuffle.”

Watson gave Holmes a look.

“But it is all for the best,” Holmes hastily tacked on.

“Yes,” Watson answered at last, unable to keep a smile from stretching across his face, “It did go well, didn’t it? I’m sorry I wasted so much time worrying about it.”

“It had its worrying points,” Holmes acquiesced. “If not for all your worries, it may not have gone nearly so well.”

“You’re the one who suggested where to stake out to catch the sniper?” one of the officers walking near them spoke up.

Holmes waved it off. “I happen to be very familiar with the area.”

“Well, those were brilliant hiding spots, I don’t know how you found them, but I could’ve looked all day and wouldn’t have seen a thing. It all looks like sheer rock, who would’ve thought you could climb it.”

* * *

“Ava Smith, you are charged with the murder of Samuel Easton, John Rowe, Nelson Duvall, Thomas Johnson, and William Strout. You do not have to say anything, but it may harm your defense if you do not mention when questioned something which you later rely on in court. Anything you do say may be given in evidence,” Mrs. Houghton recited. “Do you understand?”

Miss Smith merely nodded. She sat in imperious silence on the opposite side of the interrogation table, as though daring them to question her.

The doctor could only repeat his question from the falls, “Why? Why attempt to reenact the past like this?”

To his surprise, she smiled. “Why do _you_ do it? There’s only one reason, isn’t there?”

“What are you talking about?” the doctor demanded.

“Who would want to be Miss Smith or Jonathan Holmes, or even Doctor Watson, when you could be Sherlock Holmes or Professor Moriarty? Who doesn’t want the starring role?”

“ _I_ try to help people,” he protested.

She waved off the suggestion. “Of course, anyone would want to be the great detective, but you can’t have Sherlock Holmes without Professor Moriarty, and anyway my talents are better suited to the latter than the former,” she concluded with a dismissive shrug.

“That’s a poor way to honor Sherlock Holmes.”

“What does he care, at the bottom of Reichenbach Fall?”

Watson flinched. Holmes rested a reassuring hand on Watson’s elbow.

“No,” Watson said at last, “You’re right, Sherlock Holmes and Professor Moriarty both make a poor excuse for one’s actions.” He gave her a pointed look.

“I’ve been wondering,” she remarked, ignoring his comment all together, “Why you call yourself Jonathan Holmes while your friend here goes by the name Sherlock and calls you Watson.”

Watson struggled to find an answer.

Thankfully, Holmes replied easily enough, “That my name is Sherlock Holmes is little more than a coincidence. You could call it providence, if you like, that someone with such a name would take an interest in detection, or you could speculate that I was inspired by my namesake. Either way, it is not so unlikely that, finding myself the friend of a man named John, I might call him Watson.”

She turned on Watson, unconvinced. “And that your name is also Holmes is likewise a coincidence?”

Watson hesitated. “I thought it fitting.”

“Isn’t it, though? Better than John Smith, at the very least.”

“Is that it? All of this just for a name that you have no claim to?” Watson demanded.

She sat a little straighter in indignation. “I think I’ve lived up to it well enough.”

“Hardly,” Holmes put in. “Professor Moriarty’s organization was rather more than a band of actors and con artists.”

“This is only the beginning, an advertisement if you will for my and Sabrina’s business, but I suppose she hasn’t told you a word.”

“What kind of a business is that?” Watson asked.

“You could call me a consultant. Now, it’s about time I saw a lawyer, I do have the right to one, don’t I?”

Mrs. Houghton nodded and motioned for the guards to come in and take Miss Smith back to her cell. Once she was gone Mrs. Houghton concluded, “I can’t say much for her motivation, but otherwise I’d say the case is closed. Between your testimony and all of the material evidence, I would be surprised if she didn’t plead guilty.”

“Thank you for all of your assistance,” Watson said.

“Always happy to help.” Mrs. Houghton shook his hand and Holmes’s before getting back to work, while the two gentlemen returned to Baker Street.

* * *

10 Later: 

Sherlock Holmes and Dr. John Watson were seated at the table in their flat at 221B Baker Street for breakfast one morning. Holmes was busy on his phone while Watson had the paper open in front of him. However, Watson had made little progress in reading it; instead, he was preoccupied by his companion.

“Holmes,” Watson said at last, “I can hardly believe it, but do I see a touch of grey in your hair?”

Holmes looked up from his phone with a start and seemed to take a moment to realize what had been said. Finally, he replied, “Perhaps it is not my hair, but your keen vision that is beginning to fail you.”

Watson gave him a reproachful look, but he could not help but smile back. “You must have seen it in the mirror,” Watson insisted, “Unless it is your faculties that are failing. Mine are sharp enough to see the beginnings of wrinkles on my face.”

“No, I have seen them,” Holmes admitted, though he did not seem to mind, “And your wrinkles too; they accentuate your smile.”

“Then it’s true,” Watson marveled, “Age is beginning to catch up with us once more.”

Holmes nodded. “I would say so. And I, for one, am ready to do away with this false veneer of youth that I have worn for so long. What do you say?”

“I agree,” Watson answered. “I have lived a full life. And now, I can be grateful that I have lived long enough not to spend the rest of my time alone.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This story was a long time in the making and there were many twists and turns along the way. I'm grateful to everyone who stuck with it until the end!
> 
> I've posted a short follow-up that addresses the more romantic side of Holmes and Watson's relationship: [Holmes and Watson Meet the 21st Century](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23719942)


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